


Fatal Hellos

by ghastlyghosts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age of Ultron does not exist, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Flashbacks, Hiding, M/M, Revenge, Searching for Bucky, civil war rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7402435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghastlyghosts/pseuds/ghastlyghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers has lost almost everything, and will do whatever he can to get the one thing he can save back: his best friend. Now he's in a race against time, as the government seems to have their eyes set on finding the Winter Soldier after the SHIELD information leak in D.C. years prior.<br/>Steve runs into an old enemy and quickly realizes there are more people looking for Bucky than he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Every pew was full. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—he wasn’t surprised—but there was a bitterness in all of this. The last time Steve had seen Peggy, deep down he knew it wouldn’t be long. Even in those times, her conditioning worsening, they had each other. They could be alone together. Steve could imagine how things might have been different. 

Though he sat in the front, the distance between Steve Rogers—present, still in the body of a young man—felt like miles away from where Peggy Carter laid in her casket. They were not alone. Things would never be different. 

He’d met her children. It was hard to swallow, seeing her face mixed in with a man who he’d never gotten the chance to meet. A man’s face that wasn’t his. The girl, Abigail, had her narrow, expectant eyes. She smiled kindly at him when they met, saying she’d heard so much about him, how it was an honor to meet him. Her eyes crinkled in the same way Peggy’s had. The boy had the same jawline that would clench if he were irritated or hiding an emotion. 

They were both older than him, older than he was supposed to be, if the technicalities of years past didn’t count.

Had he make the right call? Subjectively, sure. Of course he did. He’d saved all of New York, stopped Red Skull and, so he thought at the time, stopped HYDRA. But objectively, Bucky would never be the same after his decision. It was his fault he fell into the Soviets’ hands. If he’d never crashed the plane…

His eyes shifted back to the casket. 

***

Funerals weren't unusual to him. Death wasn’t foreign. He’d been in the damn war. Death by old age, that was new to him. His dad died in the war, mom got sick. When he thought Bucky was dead, he hadn’t even hit 30. Hearing, “She lived a long life” rubbed him the wrong way. 

Maybe because the Peggy most of them knew, the one he’d visited in the nursing home the few years that he could, wasn’t who he pictured when her name was brought up. 

A few days after Sharon broke the news to him, she asked if he wanted to give a speech. He said no, though that didn’t stop him from writing one. 

_“There was never a time I wasn’t thrilled with knowing Peggy Carter,”_ it said. _“Somehow, she managed to steer everyone she met in the right direction. Where would I be without her? I would have sold war bonds until 1945. After that, who knows. I certainly wouldn’t be here, right now. But that’s not the life I lived.”_ He practiced the speech, considering telling Sharon he would do it after all. But his voice caught midway through his words, the realization that he’d be saying this to a crowd of people at not just any funeral, but Peggy’s hit him hard. He didn’t take the speech. 

A painful knot twisted itself inside his stomach. He shouldn’t have waited so long to visit her. As soon as he’d known she was alive, he should have gone. Something from before still remained. That should have comforted him, especially if it were Peggy. But she’d moved on. She needed to. No one would have ever known he was going to come back and Steve couldn’t expect her to wait. 

Her memory was familiar, but what he would be faced with would have changed. When everything was already so different, that scared him. 

His eyes stung, his throat clamping shut. As they lowered Peggy into the ground, he blinked away tears, fingers folded into each other tightly. A hand pressed against his shoulder as Natasha walked up to his side. 

Together, they stared. Steve watched, quietly saying his last goodbye. 

***

At first glance, it might have seemed odd, Captain America sitting in a small booth at a diner, a cup of coffee caught between his hands. Steve thought about this as he waited for Natasha to get to the diner she’d suggested they meet at. She said she wanted to talk. 

No, Steve sitting in the booth wasn’t strange at all. Not to him. He thought of the countless of restaurants he and Bucky would sit at; both of them had always been lousy at cooking. May as well go to the place down the street, or the one that finally got a new cook, rather than try their luck at making some of Steve’s ma’s old recipes. She’d always been too busy at the hospitals to be the best cook either. 

Steve Rogers knew diners. He knew making beans over a fire in the middle of European woods during wartime. Steve Rogers knew missing a few meals and the hollowness of an empty stomach. A diner setting didn’t seem to mesh well with Captain America. 

Captain America was supposed to sit in secluded cafeterias at SHIELD, quickly funneling down a sandwich between missions. Captain America ate when he was free, the times few and far between, or before a meeting with the Avengers. Well, now SHIELD was nothing and the Avengers were off doing their own different projects. What was Captain America supposed to be doing now? 

Steve Rogers and Captain America were always two separate entities all together. No one looked at the man with the shield and saw the scrawny kid from Brooklyn. Before, at least, Steve didn’t mind it so much. He was doing what he knew was right, so Captain America didn’t seem completely wrong. 

Peggy knew the difference. Bucky knew the difference. 

Now they were both gone. Was this what he had woken up for? 

The door to the diner opened, the bell above jingling pleasantly. A cool breeze from the English countryside swept through as Natasha took her seat in the booth across from Steve. 

They settled into a momentary silence. Steve still sat, staring at his coffee with a blank face. Natasha let him. At least for a minute. 

“It was a nice service,” she said. Had she said that after the burial? Steve couldn’t remember. He’d heard someone say it. 

“I want to find Bucky.” His voice was hard, definite. It was almost as if he was trying to prove he could keep it from wavering after the funeral. But he needed this. While he was losing everything else, he knew Bucky was still out there, and he would find him. 

“We’ve been looking, you know that,” Natasha replied. The waitress came by and filled up the empty coffee cup in front of her without asking. She smiled politely, a thing Natasha did rarely, but sipped from the cup. 

Steve shook his head, sighing. “Then we aren’t looking hard enough. He’s out there. We can’t leave him alone.” 

“Are you really sure a manhunt is what you need right now?” She raised an eyebrow at him. 

“I’m going to find him with or without anyone’s help. Sam already agreed to keep looking once I get back.” 

“You’ve turned over the whole country. Maybe you should accept until he wants to be found, Barnes… _Bucky_ is going to keep a low profile.” If she used his nickname, she figured maybe Steve would be more likely to listen to her. It was familiar. Took the matter a little more close to home. 

Steve took a sip of coffee, maintaining eye contact with Natasha. “Maybe,” Steve replied, “maybe not.” He put the cup back on its saucer. “He doesn’t want to get into the wrong hands again. When he hears we’re looking for him, he might make show up.” 

“Don’t you think that’s a little too hopeful?” Natasha asked, a crease forming in between her eyebrows. 

“He _knows_ me,” Steve insisted, just the same way he had when he’d last seen Bucky. Maybe what he wanted to say instead was he needs me. 

Natasha’s lips pursed and she gazed out the window. She always had something to say, she wouldn’t give up the fight if she thought Steve was wrong. She wouldn’t even give up the fight if Steve were right. 

“Will you help?” 

Her gaze shifted over to him, lips curled up into a sad smile. “I’m going to miss my train.” 

“Natasha,” Steve sighed, reaching out to grab her arm, but she slipped away from his fingertips. The door opened and closed, the bell chiming happily above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found some things a friend of mine and I wrote from a while ago about our Civil War predictions and I decided that I would write it out and make it what we had anticipated.


	2. Chapter Two

Steve woke up, a faint breeze blowing out the gauzy curtains that hung over the window. SHIELD tried to trick him. Though the more time he spent with Nick Fury, the more Steve wondered if this was really supposed to work at all. 

“You aren’t familiar with our organization,” Fury said. They sat in his office, light coating the entire room. Everything was metallic and made of harsh lines. There was an edge to it all, just like Director Fury. 

He didn’t respond. Against everything he would do under ordinary circumstances, Steve sat at the chair in front of the desk Fury stood behind. If it were any other day, he wouldn’t have, but his head was too full to take any new information standing. It was 2011. 75 years had passed. 

It didn’t even feel like a day since he’d last been talking to Peggy, eyes trained on the ice as Red Skull’s plane nose dived closer and closer. 

Director Fury continued, placing a manilla folder down onto his glass desk, sliding it in Steve’s direction. “A few friends of yours helped found us.” 

Steve waited a minute, watching the folder carefully as if Fury would take it away before he’d have the chance to look at it. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, Steve reached for it and allowed it to slowly open. 

His stomach quickly settled into knots. Momentarily, he’d forgotten how to breathe. It was a feeling reminiscent of his asthma attacks before the serum took care of that. A picture of Peggy rested at the top of the stack of papers. Her face was older, fine lines beginning to settle into her skin, but her eyes were the same. Still as determined. 

She’d had those eyes fixed on him as she aimed a gun at the vibranium shield Howard Stark had passed on to him what seemed like months ago. 

It had been 75 years ago that moment had happened.

A note had been stuck onto the photograph. _Active._

“She’s still alive?” Steve asked. It was the first he’d spoken since they’d left Times Square. His heart lurched when he realized how surprised he sounded. He hadn’t expected anyone to still be alive.

“Still in New York, too,” Fury said, leaning against the desk. He wasn’t looking at Steve. The eye hidden by an eyepatch faced him. He turned his gaze back towards the folder in front of him. 

Peggy’s photo slipped down, revealing the top of a head from the photograph behind her’s. Reluctantly, Steve flipped to the next picture. Howard Stark stared into the camera, that cocky air he had flowing through the lens. His hair was graying. He, too, looked older than when he’d last seen him. 

Steve had managed to stay exactly the same. 

Over Howard’s picture, a large, red stamp pressed over his face, _deceased_ in big, bold letters. 

He had so many questions, but Fury seemed to pick up on them before Steve could even manage to open his mouth. “Stark died in a car accident in 1991, along with his wife.” 

So Howard had married. He couldn’t really picture it, seeing him settle down, but he’d always imagined himself doing it. Maybe deep down Howard had the same dreams. And it wasn’t old age that got him. It was an accident. 

Of the people he knew, accidents leading to unfortunate outcomes seemed to be a running theme. 

“He had a son, Tony” Director Fury continued. “He joined along with SHIELD after some persuasion. He managed to make a name for himself.” Steve thought he would have gone on to add, just like you, but he didn’t. He was relieved. It seemed as if Fury got the right idea of where to stop, what Steve was capable of hearing right now and what was too much. 

Slowly, Steve flipped through the pages in the file. Dates, names, places of important missions. Recruits, both successful and failed. Just enough to get a good handle on the background of what SHIELD was, but not enough to feed Steve too much information. He had a gut feeling that Fury wasn’t one to share so much off the bat, if at all. 

He placed the folder back onto the desk and stood up, beginning to walk out. At some point he would need to draw the line and realize that today had been enough for one day. 

“Don’t you think you’ve got some reading to catch up on?” Fury’s voice never raised more than it needed to but always seemed to make the impact he wanted it to. It could fill a room. 

Steve stopped and turned back around. The file was in Fury’s hand, holding it out for Steve to take. He walked back across the office, taking the folder out of his grip. 

“Training starts next week.” 

“I haven’t agreed to this,” Steve replied, making sure Fury could feel the weight behind his voice. Director or not, who did he think he was assuming that Steve owed him anything? 

“You’re a soldier. You’re going to need something to do, and the world will continue to need you to help it.” The director turned his back, returning to his oversized chair, taking a seat, and just like that, seemed too preoccupied in his new task to continue to acknowledge Steve. 

When he dove towards the surface in the plane, he’d never expected to wake up. He had every intention of going down with all of Red Skull’s plans. He and Peggy never really said goodbye. It was too much for either of them to face, even though they both knew that was going to be it. 

He went down. Peggy was alive. Bucky was gone. Somehow, he’d managed to wake up. Peggy was still alive. Bucky was still gone. 

**

“You know we can’t do this alone,” Sam Wilson said, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. 

“I’m not saying we do this alone. I’ve already tried Natasha and she’s not going to do it. Wouldn’t give me a straight answer why, but she’s out. We can try giving Clint a call and see if he’s willing.” 

“What about Tony?” Sam phrased it like he knew it wasn’t a suggestion Steve was willing to hear but had to say it anyway. 

“No Tony,” Steve said quickly. 

Sam sighed, shaking his head. “Sure, let’s not ask the guy with all of the technology capable of finding a missing persons for help.” 

“ _No Tony._ ” Steve leaned forward, elbows on Sam’s kitchen table, and ran a hand down his face. “Tony knew about Project INSIGHT. He helped. Knowingly or not, he was apart of the same people who were keeping Bucky hostage. I don’t want him to be on the team when we find Bucky.” Ever since DC, things were tense between Steve and Tony. Every second they spent around each other seemed a minute away from a fight. He couldn’t be distracted. Not when Bucky was still out there alone. 

There was quiet for a minute. The hum of Sam’s refrigerator filled the room. “So three against one? How hard can it be?” A joke. It’d proven to be hard for the past two years. They’d still managed to come up empty handed. Wherever Bucky was, he wasn’t easy to find. 

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t important, Sam,” Steve replied, keeping his voice low and even. He’d put Sam through a lot, and asked even more of him. He deserved his gratitude but he also needed to know that he was necessary in this. He was one of the few he could still trust. 

A half smile tugged across his face. “You Avengers always need something from me.” 

Steve let out a breathy laugh. “I owe you this. Really.” 

“Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t let you forget it.”

The past half hour, Steve and Sam had been working out what their next step was. Finding an ex-assassin lying low was about as difficult as anyone would imagine, and even more difficult than Steve would have thought. Out of anyone he’d ever met, Steve had known Bucky better than anyone else. When he thought about finding him, he thought getting into the right mindset would lead him the right way almost immediately. 

He had known Bucky. He didn’t know what HYDRA had made him. 

“Now’s a good time to go for a drive, don’t you think?” Sam asked. 

After a couple months of unsuccessful searching, Sam had tapped into a police radio. If anything sounded remotely like Bucky, they would be on top of it. So far they’d made a few stops on false alarms and managed to scare a few guys in over their heads back into their place. Easy work compared to what they were really after.

They climbed into Sam’s car, replacing the one that had been wrecked on the bridge two years ago. 

“So it seems like there’s trouble in superhero paradise,” noted Sam, turning onto the highway to make a loop back around downtown. “Absolutely _no_ Tony, Natasha won’t tell you why she won’t help.” 

Steve leaned against the door of Sam’s car and kept his gaze fixed outside the window, watching the city minimize in the distance in the sideview mirror. “Has there ever been a day where I’d would say yes to Tony?” he asked, smirking in Sam’s direction. “Natasha just says that he’ll only be found when he wants to be.” 

“Hasn’t she heard that I’ve tried that about five times already? Steve Rogers wouldn’t listen to anyone after his mind was made up even if he was held at gunpoint.” 

“I’ve been held at gunpoint a few too many times. It’s lost its novelty.” 

Sam laughed again, shaking his head at the sheer ridiculousness of the man to his right. 

The words _high security prison break_ stood out amid the break in their conversation. Steve and Sam immediately glanced at each other before Sam reached for the volume knob. _“Alias, Crossbones.”_

“245, what is that…assault with a deadly weapon?” Steve asked, eyebrows knitting together. 

Sam flipped on his turn signal without even a confirmation with Steve. Sure, it wasn’t Bucky, but a guy with a deadly weapon and an alias seemed up their ally. 

***

The room was poorly lit. A sallow glow ran across the face of the man sitting in the corner of the room. The greenish glare shadowed the dips and wrinkles in the man’s face as he spat at the small group of men who sat in the old room with. 

“I don’t care what it takes, you bring me Rogers or you don’t bother coming back at all. You understand?” 

There were grunts of agreement. The last minute reunion of SHIELD’s remaining STRIKE team members weren’t those considered very talkative. Maybe it had been the shock of seeing Brock Rumlow in this state. Maybe the shock of seeing him alive. 

“I’lll handle Barnes,” Rumlow growled. He needed someone who’d do the dirty work they were asked to do without question. And if it helped get him to Rogers, or helped get under Rogers’ skin, then a little family reconciliation was in order after all. 

He’d put Rollins in charge of finding Rogers. That was the most sure he could be the job would be done without him in charge. In the meantime, his best bet was with finding Barnes. Finish that first, the rest will fall into place. 

When they found him buried beneath the rubble of what was left of SHIELD headquarters, there wasn’t even a moment of hesitation of taking him to the hospital. That was their first mistake, allowing him the slightest opportunity to live. 

Months and months were spent trying to fix his crisped and scotched skin. Physical therapy to figure out how to walk on the grotesque remains of his legs. In the beginning, strips of flesh would peel off when they changed his hospital gown. 

Through it all, there had never been a moment when he forgot who to blame. Steve Rogers and his thick-headed belief that all he could do in his life was the right thing sent him up in flames inside headquarters. He was just going to have to feel what it was like to burn along with him. 

The police had come once he was well enough to be discharged. Sent him right into prison, the best place he could be thrown into. They’d been dumb enough to put him in with the rest of who had survived the SHIELD attack. 

Of course, there was always a chance it hadn’t been a coincidence. HYDRA could always make its way anywhere. 

The team roamed around the tiny room, collecting what they needed to do their job at a snail’s pace. 

“Are you waiting for the cops to show up here to go back to your god damn cells?” Rumlow yelled, standing up from his chair at a furious speed. Everyone picked it up, trying to get away as quickly as possible. That would make a better outcome for everyone.


	3. Chapter Three

Clint was in. 

Of all the places they could meet, the three of them stood in an abandoned parking lot just outside of the city. 

“Where did he find this place?” Sam asked, ducking out of his car and looking around the desolate lot. Clint was the only other person there, standing a few feet away from where Sam parked, no other vehicle in sight. The highway hummed above their heads, the noise making it impossible for any bystander to overhear what they would have to say. 

When Steve talked to Clint on the phone, it was pretty clear that neither of them wanted to go into detail over the phone about where they would start their search. 

Steve knew he wasn’t the only one looking for Bucky. 

Clint walked up to the two of them, hands stuffed inside his pockets. He considered asking how Clint got here but then he figured by taxi. 

“Nat told me from the beginning you were going to keep at this no matter what,” Clint said, voice rising above the sound of traffic. 

“As long as he’s still out there, I have no reason to stop.” Steve met Clint half way, Sam following his lead, keeping his eyes fixed closely on Clint. “She didn’t seem to jump at the chance to help though.” 

Clint shook his head. “You know her. She’s not going to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

“Doesn’t quite make sense why she wouldn't want to do this,” Steve replied. He didn’t notice Sam’s warning glance. The goal of this meeting was to get Clint to help out, not to push him away, a Steve Rogers signature move. 

Steve was looking for answers, and if anyone were to know the motive behind Natasha’s actions, it would be Clint. But it seemed like a subject he wasn’t eager to discuss. “Just because Natasha’s not interested doesn’t mean I’m not. I’m in.” 

And they had their third confirmed. It wasn’t quite the team Steve would have hoped to assemble but on short notice, and with a dire need, it was going to have to do. 

“Is there anything you can do to change Natasha’s mind?” 

Clint laughed, a smirk appearing across his face. “Yeah, I think I could be willing to pay her a visit and see what I can do.” He gave a tug on his shirt and looked around, giving Steve and Sam the chance to fill in the spaces of what he was implying on their own terms. It must have dawned on him almost instantly how wrong he sounded. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I can talk to her and see if she’ll change her mind.”

“You’re so lucky she wasn’t here to see that,” Sam said, eyebrows raised, scanning Clint as if he was preparing himself to recite every detail of this moment if he needed to.

*** 

Fluorescent lighting. A room bathed in white. Bodies caked in red. Skin mutilated. Bullet holes. A man standing over them all, only the slightest trembling in his fingers. 

The room smelled metallic, puddles of blood forming around lifeless members of HYDRA, all of them in hiding, trying to regroup and rebuild. 

Bucky Barnes stood victoriously over them. These were the ones, among a long line of hundreds of others, who made him like this. The ones who made it easy to stand above the bodies of those he’d murdered and feel nothing. 

Blood dripped from his fingertips, his shirt splattered, hair dripping with sweat. His breath heaved. Being in this room again overwhelmed Bucky with an unshakeable feeling of instability. Like at any moment, the handlers would come out, grab him by the shoulders and like a dog who was trained to know better, he wouldn’t fight back. 

It’d happened so many times in the past. 

_“You know why we need you.” Pierce’s voice echoed through the lab. He was the only one who dared to make any noise. The others knew that if Pierce was in the room, the asset was off limits. He stood a few feet away, surrounded by his men. In his suit, he would have looked more in place scolding school children who fought on the playground, not gaslighting a highly volatile assassin._

_The Winter Solider gave no sign of response, but stared at Pierce in the eye. He had to show attention._

_“If we don’t have you, everything falls to pieces. You are the key we need to keep everything in order.” He glanced at the man near by, a younger, Brock Rumlow. A man who wouldn’t be a burn victim until many years in the future. Pierce nudged his head towards the door out of the lab._

_Rumlow looked at his team and waved them away, trailing behind his back._

_Pierce, the Winter Soldier, and the handlers were the only ones who remained in the lab._

_The faces were familiar. The same ones who were here whenever he would need to be sent back in his place. If he’d acted out, if he’d done something wrong, if a mission failed, these technicians would arrive. The familiar tray of various medical supplies sat to his right. What good would they be on his left side? There would be no skin to press a needle into, no vein to set tranquilizers into his bloodstream._

_Half man, half machine. The technicians had to work with whatever they could tap into._

_The soldier had tried to escape. It never happened before. There was the occasional sign of resistance but he was never out long enough for this to be a common occurrence._

_He had successfully finished his mission, but never arrived to the extraction point. The handlers waited and when the wait went too long, they went looking. They didn’t find him at his mission point. They only found a body, openly wounded._

_It was July 4th, and when they tried to ask Pierce why today of all days the soldier would try to escape, he kept quiet._

_“If you try to leave, we all fail. None of us can do what we came here to do.” Pierce’s eyes stuck to the soldier, who maintained eye contact. Placing a hand on the shoulder of one of the technicians, Pierce’s voice was lowered enough to keep his words hidden from the soldier. Cryo. Put him back until he was useful again. Give him enough time stuck in the freezer to slow his brain down, repress all of the memories that tried to resurface._

_He would escape and find nothing left for him out there. No one was left to remember him. One of the last ones left was dead by his hand, almost 6 months ago._

_Howard Stark had been approached. He would have made a great addition, had he been persuaded the right way. But his pride was too easily bruised. If he turned his back on the side he had chosen almost 50 years ago, it would look bad for his reputation._

_“No one will ever know,” Pierce assured him._

_“You must think I’m crazy if I would ever do that, and you’re even crazier for thinking I’m letting you get away with this,” Howard insisted. That was that. If he wasn’t going to join, he wouldn’t be able to walk around knowing the secret._

_He and the Mrs. had tried to get out. They left the kid behind so it would seem less suspicious. They barely brought him anywhere. It wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Just a spur of the moment vacation to the most expensive hideaway money could by._

_The soldier got to them before they ever had a chance._

Bucky approached one of the sinks in the lab, metal fingers twitching. He ran his fingers under the warm water, watching the blood swirl as it disappeared into the drain. The smell of death was beginning to get overwhelming. 

He’d promised himself he would never do this again. Not after the things HYDRA had made him do. But this was a different cause. This wasn’t mindless killing or death on someone else’s behalf. This was the revenge that he promised himself. This was him finishing what they had started. 

They made him the assassin. They had made him everything he never wanted to be. They had people they wanted to wipe off their list. Now he had a list of his own. 

Bucky dried his hands on his pants. There was nothing that could be done about his shirt but he knew he could get away without being seen. Everyone now sprawled across the floor had made sure of that. 

From inside his pocket, he pulled out a piece of paper, worn and tattered at the edges from folding and unfolding several times. Slowly, he peeled open the paper. Ink smudged and stained, but clearly, a numbered list remained. HYDRA bases. Everyone he could get information on. 

A technician had left a pen near the sink. Bucky picked it up and ran the ink over the base in Jacksonville, Illinois.


	4. Chapter Four

Crossbones. The day of the prison break, that was the name, the alias, they’d mentioned. And now a town was targeted by a terrorist under the same name. 

Steve and Sam ran to his car, where they had spent the majority of their past week, running all over town. Now Crossbones, who they’d heard about while looking for Bucky, was making a reappearance, and only fifteen minutes away. 

Steve had a sinking feeling it wasn’t a coincidence. 

“What do you think this guy’s about?” Sam asked, eyes fixed onto the road. 

“Apparently terrorizing innocent civilians,” Steve responded, sirens and commotion increasing the closer to the town they got. Police cars lined the perimeters. “What are they odds that they’ll let us through?” 

Sam shot him a questioning look.

Minutes later, Steve ducked and rolled as Sam dropped him from miles above the ground. It was one way to get past the police. 

Steve quickly patrolled the area, searching for signs of whoever Crossbones was. Sam took the overhead view. If he got onto the streets, Sam would let him know. They were deeper into the buildings now. The only noises were that of the sirens Steve and Sam had distanced themselves from. 

“Steve!” Sam’s voice came quickly from the coms. Before he had a chance to react, Steve was knocked back into the brick wall of one of the abandoned buildings. The force knocked the air out of him, until he’d realized it was some sort of miniature bomb. His shield scattered away from him. 

He looked up. A man lumbered towards him in heavy armor. A black mask with a skull painted over it blocked the view from his face. His pace rapid, though he took no time to worry about is grace. “Don’t you love when the people you’re looking for find you first?” As the man got closer, Steve considered the voice. He’d heard it somewhere. “I suppose you ain’t having the same luck, are you Rogers?” 

Realization made his blood run cold. Steve shot up. “Rumlow.” 

“Long time, no see, Cap. Suppose you weren’t expecting me ‘round here, were you?” 

Steve’s fingers tightened into fists. What he wanted, more than anything, was to rip the mask off of Rumlow’s face, smash his knuckles into his bones and listen to them as they broke. He wanted to make him pay for everything he put Bucky through. Even though he wasn’t here, Steve was, and he was more than willing to take care of Bucky’s revenge for him. 

Sam swooped down, leg swinging across Rumlow’s helmet, making him skid across the ground. Landing on his feet and regaining his balance, Sam joined Steve at his side. 

Rumlow stood back up, fingers prying at the edge of his mask. It hit the ground with a dull thud, bouncing off the ground once. His face was disfigured, skin rippled and reddened from healing from burns. He locked eyes with Steve, panting, before his lips turned up into a deadly smirk. “Who do you think will find him first, Rogers? Me or you? Who do you think he’s going to want to stay with?” 

Underneath his leather gloves, Steve’s knuckles were turning white. He launched himself at Rumlow, fist colliding with his temple, making him stagger back. 

“Don’t want to talk about it, huh?” Rumlow asked once he’d managed to put himself back in order. “Guess that search ain’t going as easy as you thought it would.” 

“He’s just trying to get a rise out of you, Cap,” Sam warned. Of course he was. Steve knew it. He knew Rumlow wanted the satisfaction of getting him worked up. And he was willing to give him that satisfaction if it ended with Rumlow on the ground. 

“Looks like you’ve gotten a little more rough around the edges since SHIELD called it quits.” Rumlow slurred, like the way he would after nights when the team had gone out to a bar and he’d had a few beers. 

Steve had considered him a friend. Thought that maybe these would the the people he could trust in his new life. Now he wanted nothing more than to be the one to smash his skull in. But now Rumlow was going to fight back. He pushed Steve back, getting back up on his feet. He raised his arms, some sort of gauntlet slid back. Flames ruptured from them, and through the smoke and blazing, Steve could see Rumlow’s smile. 

“An eye for an eye, Rogers!” he yelled over the roaring. The fire fluidly went in Steve’s direction. He dove. Rolled. Reaching for his shield and crouched behind it, feeling heatwaves wind over where the vibranium ended. 

It stopped. Sam was in the air again, weaving himself through Rumlow’s fire. Without his helmet on, he was more vulnerable and Sam knew that. It was just a matter of getting close enough without getting fried to knock him out long enough to not be a threat. 

Steve picked up the shield and propelled it right at Rumlow’s chest. It ricocheted off, and Steve caught it just as Rumlow fell to the ground. Sam swooped down, his boot knocking into the side of Rumlow’s face, and he was out, at least for the time being. 

The air smelled like charred leather and blistered skin. 

Sam’s gaze rose to meet Steve’s. “Is it too soon to miss fighting bad guys who didn’t have built-in flamethrowers?” 

“You okay?” Steve asked, straightening his back out before he’d shot Rumlow a look that was nothing short of loathing. 

“Of course.” Sam stood over Rumlow, tense, as if he was sure he would wake up any second and catch them off guard. “What do we do about him?” 

“We find out what we need to know.” 

***

Steve yanked off the last gauntlet from Rumlow’s wrist and tossed it across the floor, letting it slide across the floor and far out of his reach. Not that he was going to get anywhere hear it. Sam was making sure the clamp Rumlow was stuck under wasn’t going to budge. An empty town with an out-of-business mechanic just outside was convenient. 

Rumlow started to stir. “Whaddaya know. You got me.” He rolled his head to the side and looked up at Steve and Sam. He smirked again. “Looks like you undressed me too. Eager, are we?” His armor was thrown about in the room, in general proximity to the clamp. He was left in a t-shirt and shorts. 

“What do you know about Bucky?” Steve demanded. This was going to end now.

“I know he’s about 185 pounds. What did he weigh before? I think HYDRA made some great progress with that,” he responded, never faltering eye contact with Steve. 

Steve jabbed his finger in Rumlow’s direction. “This isn’t a game anymore. The only reason you’re alive is because we need to know where Bucky is.” 

“If that’s the only reason I’m alive, what makes you think I’m gonna talk?” He spat on the floor. “Besides, Romeo, if I knew where he was, don’t you think I’d have him?” 

The room was silent as Steve seethed. His jaw was tense. The air at the mechanic’s was stale and stuffy. They could be in here for a while before anyone would think to check. They were outside the city now and the police wouldn’t think to check. “We have time. And if you don’t want to talk, we’ll figure out how to make something work.” 

Rumlow let out a breathy laugh. With his arm caught and his legs splayed the way they were, he could have looked like a little kid. Instead he looked like an animal caught in a trap, ready to attack whatever came closest. “You’re no different from us.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean,” Sam asked. His voice was hard but he glanced at Steve carefully, unsure of what he might do next. 

“You want information. You’ll do what you have to to take it.” His eyes narrowed and his grin widened. “You’ll do to me what we did to him.” 

“Bucky was innocent. You’re not,” Steve replied quickly, his words harsh and fast. Said almost like a plea. 

“How could anyone with that much blood on his hands be innocent?” Rumlow’s eyes fell onto Steve, something beyond predatory in them. Vicious and wild, knowing he was going to strike a nerve soon if he hadn’t already. 

Steve’s blood boiled inside him, his shoulders tense. His mind was crowded, Rumlow’s words running laps around his thoughts of what he should do now. Before he really processed what he was doing, he slammed the shield against the side of Rumlow’s head. His body slumped against the clamp. Steve’s breathing was rapid. “Oops.” 

***

The prison came into sight. “Welcome back home, asshole,” Sam muttered over his shoulder to Rumlow, who was still knocked out across the back seat. 

Steve’s phone buzzed in the glove compartment. Under any other circumstance, he wouldn’t have looked until Rumlow was back behind bars but this was different. The phone knocked against the plastic bottom of the compartment and Steve felt like he needed to read whatever he had been sent. 

_“we found him”_

His breath caught in his throat and he forgot, momentarily, where he was and what he was doing. All he could think about was the fact that Bucky was somewhere. Natasha had seen him. Anyone could have found him, which meant there was no time to waste. He had to get there. 

 

Steve shook his head. “I have to go.” 

“What?” Sam asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “You _are_ kidding right?” 

“They found Bucky.” Steve’s sentences were short, his mind suddenly distracted, when all he was thinking about was the urgency of getting to him. 

“We’re sort of in the middle of a situation here,” Sam replied, gesturing to the backseat where they’d stashed their captive. 

“Sam, I know. But this is-“ 

“I’ll handle it.” He started pulling over to the side of the road. Steve glanced into the backseat and back at Sam. 

“You sure you’ll be okay?” 

He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve managed this far.” 

Steve nodded and took off down the road, pulling his phone back out and dialing Natasha’s number. “Where are you?” 

“Jacksonville, Illinois.” 

_Shit,_ he thought. _How am I going to get there?_

His pace slowed as he got nearer to a town. He knew why prisons had to be in the middle of nowhere, but in that moment he really despised the distance away from everything and how difficult that was going to make getting to another middle of nowhere town thousands of miles away. 

Suddenly, he spotted a dingy, rusted blue truck, dirt caked into the cracks in the bed. “I’m on my way.” 

***

“Nat, don’t,” Clint hissed as Natasha pulled away from his grip and slowly approached Bucky. They were at a small barn, the paint chipping and peeling away. Bucky was inside, the barn doors cracked just slightly, enough for them to see him pacing inside. 

As soon as Bucky saw her, his whole body seized up. His fists tightened and he lowered himself slightly, ready to attack if the situation arose where he needed to. 

_“Ты помнишь меня?”_ she asked, keeping herself in a fighting stance. She knew that he might not trust her right away, especially if she revealed herself to be who she really was. But she was prepared to take that chance. He needed to stay until Steve got here, and odds were he wouldn’t otherwise unless someone asked him to. 

The use of Russian seemed to make Bucky more hostile. “Get away from me.” 

_"Солдат, ты помнишь меня?”_ Natasha’s voice was more demanding now. 

Bucky’s stance loosened. _“маленький паук?”_

“It’s me,” she said, taking his relaxation as a sign that she didn’t have to worry about him attacking her. At least for right now. She heard Clint emerge from his hiding space and come towards them. 

Bucky’s eyes followed him and she could see his muscles tense again. “It’s okay. He’s with me. He’s safe.” As Clint walked by her side, he shot her a what the fuck? look, but stayed quiet. “Steve is on his way,” Natasha told him. “And it would be easier for all of us if you stayed here so he’s able to find you.” 

“I can’t stay here,” Bucky quickly responded. He sounded sad. 

“We’ll be here with you. You won’t be alone. We won’t let anything happen to you,” Natasha promised, keeping her voice steady. 

Clint watched the whole scene unfold in front of him. He knew that Steve had asked him to get Natasha to help because he would know what it was that was keeping her away from the situation. Apparently he was in the dark about more than he had been aware of this whole time.

***

Steve got to the barn Natasha had led him to. Easy enough, considering he’d driven without seeing anything up until this point. He ran to the door, Clint waiting for him outside. “He was getting sloppy. He found some lab technicians and medical experts who were working on him for HYDRA. None of them made it. Nat’s managed to keep him here.” 

“What are the odds that we can get him out of here before anyone else finds out?” 

“Nat seems to think pretty high,” Clint responded. 

“And you disagree?” Steve asked, his eyes fixed on getting inside, getting to Bucky, making sure all of this ended before something worse happened. 

“It’s not that.” He stopped walking. Steve didn’t want to. Whatever the issue was, it could be solved when they were inside and Steve had seen Bucky. But Clint didn’t seem to agree. “They know each other.”

Now Steve stopped, turning to look at Clint fully. “Who knows each other?” 

“Barnes and Natasha.” 

“How?” 

He shrugged a shoulder. “Beats me. But something tells me that’s probably why she didn’t want to help out in the first place.” 

Steve evened his breath. They could figure it out later. He pushed the door open. Bucky stood among the dried-up hay and the remains of the farm that used to be here. As soon as the door opened he seemed ready for a fight. He saw Steve and froze completely. He didn’t even loosen up like before. 

“Bucky,” Steve breathed, approaching him. His first instinct was to wrap his arms around his shoulder, bring him close, and against everything in the world, never let go. But this wasn’t that Bucky. This wasn’t the Bucky who wouldn’t resist hugs. Steve wasn’t about to push him away just when he got him back. “I know you know me.” 

“I’m not worth this.” 

Steve stopped in his tracks. He shook his head. “That’s not true. That’s never been true.” 

“It is true.” Bucky was looking at him, begging him to believe. Begging to let him go. Steve hadn’t realized he wanted to run so badly. 

“You’re my best friend,” Steve said. “You can’t go anywhere I won’t follow.” 

Bucky opened up his mouth, maybe to protest again, but the barn doors knocked open yet again. A SWAT team intruded, guns all trained seamlessly at Bucky. Steve held an arm, defensively, across Bucky. To prevent him from running and to prevent anyone from hurting him. He wouldn’t attack. 

They handcuffed Bucky, thick metal rings bound together, giving him no chance to escape. “Don’t hurt him!” Steve said firmly to the ones who took him. He needed to give orders. To feel as if he had some sort of control over the situation. 

“We’ll need you to come with us,” one of the SWAT members said to the three of them. They didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Loading into a big van, Steve thought about the last time he’d been in something like this. 

He’d found out Bucky was alive. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever see him again. 

That wouldn’t happen this time. Steve promised himself. Whatever followed his moment, Steve would get Bucky out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really want to thank everyone for reading this and showing me that you're enjoying the story so far! It means the world to me


	5. Chapter Five

The station ran with the commotion of Manhattan during the afternoon. Steve’s pacing annoyed the officers. He was in their way, they would bump against him, looking his way with hostility. That didn’t move him. He wasn’t going to sit down until they let him see Bucky.

They'd asked him every question they could come up with. 

“How did you find out about Barnes’s whereabouts?” 

“Agents Romanoff and Barton told me when they found where he was.” 

“What business did Romanoff and Barton have looking for Barnes?” 

“I asked them for help.” 

“Why did you want to find Barnes?” 

Steve looked up, giving them a look that could mean nothing other than _are you serious?_ “He’s my best friend.” 

The officer cleared his throat. “And what business does your _best friend_ have massacring hundreds of people throughout the country in the past two years, let alone the damage done by him in the past?” 

“That’s what’s left of HYDRA,” Steve responded. He couldn’t believe he had to go through this again. “Those are the people who _made_ him do what people are still trying to hold him accountable for.” 

“And so to break that reputation he continues to kill?” The officer raised his eyebrows at you. Steve felt a wave of detest looking at the man. If he weren’t Captain America, and he just had his Steve Rogers reputation, something told him they wouldn’t get along at all. 

“Assuming he wouldn’t want to get revenge on the people who ruined his life seems a little too naively hopeful.” 

The officer nodded. “I think we’re done here.” He got up and left the room. Steve watched him leave, scoffing once he got at the door. He was sure the officer heard him. Not that it mattered in the least to him. 

Steve followed the officer out of the room, and now he paced. Back and forth. Waiting for some sort of sign from anyone. 

Natasha emerged from an interrogation room. As always, seemed cool under pressure. Steve walked up to her, and before he even had phrased the question, she said, “Barnes trained me in Russia.” 

In Russia. Bucky had worked with the Black Widows? He tried to make sense of it in his head. Natasha led him towards the chairs lined up against the wall and sat down on one. Steve followed suit.

“I was young and in training. They had men come to help us learn to fight. The teachers came and went frequently but the one who stayed with me the longest through my training was a man with a metal arm. I never knew his name but he had always been my favorite teacher. He was different from the rest. He would make jokes and he didn’t report me if I laughed.” She raised her gaze to look at Steve, who was already watching her intently. “When he shot me in Odessa, I tried to rack my brain for why he wouldn’t remember. When you said it was Bucky, it all started to make sense.” 

Steve swallowed a lump beginning to rise in his throat. “Were they hurting him?” 

“He talked about being punished but he never specified what his punishment was like.” 

They were quiet among the chatter and noise from the station. HYDRA’s reach went as far as Russia. Farther, for all he knew. And Bucky had been wrapped up in all of it. 

Steve pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose and tried to gather his thoughts when all of the sudden, the room grew even louder. He straightened up, looking where the shouting was coming from. Tony was barreling down the hallway, fixed right at Steve. When had he gotten here? 

“Did you know?” Tony shouted, stopping inches away from Steve. His eyes lit up like a fire, both with devastation and fury. 

“Did I know what?” Steve asked, already willing to play defense. 

_“Did you know?”_ When Steve didn’t respond, Tony laughed bitterly. “I’m glad you didn’t pretend to ask me to help on your little hunt if you knew we were looking for the bastard that killed my parents.” He was coming completely undone in front of Steve. In front of Natasha. In front of everyone. “I’m glad they’re locking him up where he’ll never see the light of day again. If I’d have been the one to find him, I’d do the exact same thing.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve warned. 

“I think that’s enough.” Clint came out of nowhere and started to pull Tony away. His voice was light, trying to diffuse the situation, even if Tony still looked like he was ready to throw a punch at any given second. Tony swatted Barton off of him, never tearing his eyes away from Steve. 

“If you so much as come near me, I will make it impossible for you to ever see him again.” Beneath his words, Steve heard the true threat. _He took away what was most important to me. I’ll take away what was most important to him._ And he left. 

Clint looked back at Steve and Natasha. “So I didn’t miss much then, huh?” He collapsed into the seats he and Natasha had just been sitting in, scraping his fingers through his hair. “The officer asked me what my relation to ‘Barnes’ was.” 

“What’d you say?” Steve asked, taking a seat by Clint’s side. 

“I said ‘I used to read my dad’s old Captain America comics in our attic when he was feeling particularly asshole-ish. Used to imagine Sgt. Barnes would come over and snipe the bastard dead.’ He didn’t seem to find that answer as satisfying as I did.” 

Despite everything that was going on, despite the whirlwind of disaster hitting him at every angle, Steve laughed. Just slightly. 

A new officer walked up. He glanced at Clint wearily. That must have been the one who had talked to him. “You can see Barnes now.” 

Natasha gripped his wrist. “Whatever happens, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Steve stood up and nodded, then turned to follow the officer. He led him down a long hallway, then through a series of doors. The reality of Bucky’s imprisonment was becoming more solidified in Steve’s mind. 

He was going to need to get Bucky out of here. 

They stopped at a thick glass door. The officer pressed a card to the lock and pushed the glass open. Cells lined the walls, the bars broader then they had in the cells they had passed earlier. At the end of the hall was another room, similar to the one meant for interrogation he’d been questioned in earlier. Through the window, Steve saw Bucky sitting at a short table. His wrists were handcuffed together, fingers caught between the long strands of his hair. 

A guard stood in the corner, eyes fixed on Bucky when the officer buzzed Steve in. 

“Buck.” Steve watched his friend, waiting to assess the situation. Bucky just barely looked up, his hands now resting on the table. When he saw him in the barn, it ended so quickly. He’d barely gotten a chance to process that he was really there. 

Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair across from Bucky. On the inside of the room, the window just looked like a mirror, but without a doubt, the officer he had walked down with was standing on the other side waiting for him. “What do you remember?” 

Bucky shook his head. “Not much.” It was clear that he wasn’t going to expand on that. Steve sighed. 

“Bucky, I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of here. But I can’t do that if I don’t know what happened. You have to talk.” 

Uncertainty passed over his face. The grip he had clasping his hands tightened. “They gave me my files. A long list of everything I’ve done.” 

Steve shook his head, adamantly. “You didn’t do those things. Not willingly. You know HYDRA made you do that. That’s not you.” 

He shifted. “I killed Howard Stark.” 

The first thing Steve thought was _I know_ but he didn’t. That wasn’t the right thing to say. He thought about warning Bucky that Tony knew now but he had to prioritize right now. The sooner he came up with a plan, the sooner Bucky could get out of here. That before anything. 

“It wasn’t you,” Steve repeated. 

“I remember it.” 

His eyebrows furrowed, but his heart dropped, his stomach twisting into nervous knots. He knew the answer but he needed to be wrong. He needed Bucky to say something else. “Remember what?” 

“All of them.” 

Steve stood up. The heaviness in Bucky’s eyes told him he thought Steve would leave. He walked over to the guard standing in the corner, and before the guard could ask if he was ready to leave, Steve’s fist bashed right into the side of the guard’s face. 

Bucky sat in a momentary stupor before leaping into action just behind Steve. The guard who had walked with him down the hallway rushed into the room. Bucky raised his arms over his head, knocking the thick metal of his handcuffs against the crown of the guard’s head, then looked back to Steve. 

“Come on, let’s go,” Steve said, pushing the glass door open and running out into the hallway. 

A troop of guards came running down the hall, and from what he could tell, all were armed. 

The two shot a quick glance at each other before getting a running start at the oncoming guards. Steve grabbed the collar of one and threw him around to Bucky, who knocked him against the wall of the narrow hallway. Briefly, Steve felt sorry for whoever got the brunt of a hit from Bucky’s metal arm, but given the circumstances, he didn’t let his guilt linger. 

A group of the guards began to pile up on Bucky. He tried to push them off, separate the distance a little bit so he could fight back, but they all swooped around him, creating a tight huddle. One by one, Steve pulled them off, as quickly as he could, skin colliding with skin, knuckles meeting cheekbones, jaws, and anywhere else he could reach. 

For now, they had managed the group that had come their way. Steve panted, trying to take a minute to catch his breath. 

One single second, Steve caught a familiar spark in Bucky’s eye. His lips turned up into the smallest smirk. “Let’s get going, old man.” 

Steve breathed out a laugh. “I saw a back exit on my way over. Let’s go.” He took off running down the hall. Just as they caught it, Steve managed to see Natasha and Clint jogging their way. From behind them, Tony walked up. That same look of burning hatred transformed his face. When he looked so vicious, he barely resembled himself. 

Before they had a chance to chase after them, he and Bucky slipped out the back door. Just like that, Steve was no longer an Avenger. He and Bucky earned a fugitive status.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did keep that whole "I remember all of them" thing Bucky said in Civil War just because it was heartbreaking and made me feel impending doom, so I don't claim to come up with that on my own   
> As always, thank you everyone who's read, left kudos, commented, subscribed, whatever! It all means so much to me


	6. Chapter Six

“This is the best we can do for right now.” 

Steve had said that before. When Bucky insisted they get an apartment together, he didn’t seem too thrilled with the run-down places Steve kept coming up with. This was the best he could do. And Bucky went with it. 

They lived in a small, one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, a stack of used up sketchpads and books helped hold up the three-legged coffee table that sat in the center of their living room. There were nights when they hated each other, the cramped shared space driving them crazy. Then there were the nights, and these nights occurred more than the others, where they could remember every reason why they chose to live together. 

One day Steve wandered through the front door, split lip and blood trickling down the front of his shirt. It was the beginning of autumn, the weather just beginning to turn. Their apartment was still sweltering with heat leftover from the summer. Bucky sat on the couch in his undershirt and work pants. To stay cool, he would have discarded his work shirt as soon as he got home. It would be hanging up in his closet. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Bucky said, standing up from where he’d been reading. “What’d you do this time?” 

“Nothing,” Steve muttered, shortly. 

“Like hell,” Bucky replied, going over to him and examining the damage. “Just once, can you go out without coming home looking like orange juice?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Beaten to a pulp.” He looked proud of himself as his eyes continued to skim the surface of Steve’s face. A bruise was forming right at the side of his jaw. 

Steve swatted him away, going towards the bathroom. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

“Right, I’m being the idiot.” Bucky followed Steve to the bathroom, watching over his shoulders as he washed the blood, grime, and sweat off his face. He had more he wanted to say, Steve knew it, but he was sure he wasn’t ready to find out what it was. 

As Steve dried off his face, he could picture Bucky’ trying to form the words with his lips, coming up with the best way to say what he was thinking without getting Steve angry. It was a game they were playing constantly. 

“I mean it.” 

Turning over his shoulder, Steve looked at Bucky. “Mean what?” 

“You gotta stop fighting.” 

Steve scoffed. “I’ll stop fighting when people deserve it.” 

Bucky shook his head. “People aren’t the ones getting punched. That’s only you.” He sighed and pushed his weight against the doorway. “I promised your ma I wouldn’t let you get hurt. What’s she gonna think?” 

Underneath Steve’s too-big button-up, Bucky could see his shoulders tense. It’d been a few months since Sarah had passed away and it was very obvious Steve didn’t want to talk about it. They avoided the subject of her death all together. Sometimes Bucky wondered if Steve forgot it had happened, with the way he talked about her. He expected him to say, “I’m going to go see my ma later today if you want some dinner.” 

“She told me I needed to stop too.” 

It took a minute for Bucky to respond. Steve wasn’t arguing. He wasn’t telling Bucky he was wrong. He was too tired for a fight. If it were possible, Steve’s shirt looked even bigger than it had before, like it was weighing him down now. 

“You don’t need to pretend that I don’t know what she would have wanted,” Steve continued. “I know she didn’t like seeing me hurt either.” He undid the first couple of buttons on his shirt. Drops of blood had seeped through to his undershirt, the dots of red looking like ellipses. 

“I’m not always going to be there to clean up your fights when you need me to be,” Bucky warned. 

“I don’t need you to clean anything up for me,” Steve replied, shrugging away from Bucky when he placed a hand on his shoulders. 

“Then I suppose you’re just going to get the blood out of your shirt all by yourself.” Bucky turned out of the bathroom and headed down the hall, leaving Steve standing in the tiny bathroom by himself, stained shirt in hand. 

***

Every time Steve said, “this is the best we can do for right now,” Bucky interpreted it as a promise that things would get better. That it would all look up from here. They’d get a better apartment, they would live somewhere Steve would be less likely to get punched, something would change for the better. This time didn’t have that glimmer of hope.

He sat on the edge of the sun bleached, faded couch that had been left behind in the abandoned apartment building he and Steve came across. He wasn’t talking, but it didn’t seem like he was doing much thinking either. Just sat there. 

This was the first HYDRA raid the two of them had gone on together. Their fighting, at first, fell out of place with each other. Their moves didn’t sync up the same way they had in the police station. But as the HYDRA agents kept coming in a steady stream, they began to line up together, able to throw one guy to the other, block when one of them was in trouble. When they fought, they fought with the same mind. 

It felt like old times. The closest it ever had in over 75 years. 

Steve had gotten distracted when he recognized a face. One of the members of STRIKE. Former members. Rollins, the one who had always been so buddy-buddy with Rumlow. His skin crawled and he had every attention to go after him, but there were so many of the agents, they’d use Steve’s distraction as an advantage. 

The butt of a gun slammed against the side of his head and he faltered just slightly before he was back in the present. He wasn’t working ahead, planning his revenge on Rumlow, on Rollins, on the entirety of HYDRA. He had to work with where he was, and at the moment, he and Bucky were severely outnumbered. He needed to be in the moment. 

They’d done it Steve’s way in the end. At minimum, the agents were knocked out with enough time and evidence for the police to get there and arrest them all. They could rot in a jail cell along with Rumlow. 

Bucky had noticed Rollins too. Steve had seen the look on his face morph in a way he couldn’t quite describe. It was almost as he was willing to give up completely if he came near him, like he knew better than to put up a fight. 

Steve was filled with bitter hatred. He probably had worked closely with Bucky along with Rumlow. And it made Steve feel sick how much he still didn’t know. How many people he had worked with, called a friend, and had an involvement with HYDRA was still a mystery to him. All he could hope for was that all of them had been caught and put away, or would be in the coming months. He wasn’t willing to quit and it didn’t seem like Bucky was either, as long as the encounter with Rollins was knocked from his memory. 

“Does it hurt?” Bucky finally spoke. He wasn’t sure for how long, but Bucky was already looking at him. 

He shrugged. “It’s not that bad.” It was more a dull throbbing than anything. He’d lived through worse.

“I didn’t ask if it was as bad as it looked. I asked if it hurt.” 

His tone made Steve chuckle. That was something he hadn’t heard in a while. No one else got on his case the way Bucky would. Sam liked to tell him he was an idiot just about as much as Bucky would, but he accepted his recklessness and didn’t really do much about it. Probably because Sam never felt the need to be as overly protective of Steve as Bucky had. 

“It doesn’t hurt.” He paused. “You saw him too, didn’t you?” 

Bucky didn’t respond for a while. He didn’t need to say who he meant. Bucky already knew he was talking about Rollins. No matter what he said, Steve would know the truth. But form the answer took would tell him how bad the situation actually was. 

“It was like I was back there,” he said. His voice was distant, barely like his own. 

“No one blames you.” 

“That’s not true.” 

Steve swallowed and nodded. It wasn’t. Somehow, so many people still blamed Bucky.“I don’t blame you.” 

“You should.” 

It was like the floor slid out from underneath him. Bucky really felt like he was to blame for all of that. Steve had insisted to anyone who would listen that Bucky was innocent, he was made to do it, but how would anyone listen to him if Bucky didn’t even believe it himself? 

“It wasn’t-“ 

“You don’t know what it was or it wasn’t.” Bucky surprised himself with his outburst. He couldn’t think of very many times he’d snapped at Steve like this. Maybe when Steve was out doing something dumb, but never about this. He never cut him off just to make him stop talking. 

Steve sucked in a deep breath. “You’re right.” HIs voice was low. “I don’t.” 

Bucky held out his left arm in front of him so he could look at it. He watched the fingers move, the way the joints twisted along with his movements. “They would always tell me I was doing the right thing,” he said when he finally spoke. “They told me I was going to make a difference and everything would be better.” 

“They lied to you,” Steve interjected. 

“But I did it. I believed them.” 

“You didn’t know any better. Did you ever know who you were working for?” 

A long, drawn out pause filled the room. The sounds of sirens echoed in the distance and the building groaned in a way that only old buildings did. It hummed like it could breathe. 

“I knew.” 

Steve paced once, and then stopped. “If you were yourself, you wouldn’t have wanted to work for them. Not after everything we had gone through before.” 

“It doesn’t matter if I was myself,” Bucky shot. “I did it. Any argument you make, anything you want to say to change my mind, it’s not going to work. I was the one who killed those people. I’m the one who they want to keep locked up. 

“They manipulated you.” 

Bucky shook his head. 

“They were using you to do their dirty work. As long as you were convinced you were doing the right thing, you’d keep doing it. That’s how they wanted it.”

“I’m not talking about this.” He stood up, began to walk away. Steve took a long stride and blocked the doorway. 

“Don’t,” he said. 

“Move,” Bucky growled. He seemed to grow in his defensiveness. A habit he hadn’t broken, maybe hadn’t wanted to in case he needed it for defense. But did he think he needed it as defense against Steve? 

“Not until you tell me what they did.” 

“I told you-“ 

“Yeah, you’re not talking about it,” Steve replied, trying to keep his voice light. “Just like I always told you I wasn’t going to talk about fighting or my parents. And look how that always ended.” 

“You would leave and go for a walk.” 

He was right. “Yeah, well that’s not happening this time,” Steve replied. “Neither of us are going for a walk.” Slowly, as if not wanting to bring out something in Bucky that would make the situation go south, Steve walked to the worn couch. 

“What are you doing?” Bucky asked. Hesitantly, he took a step towards him, his feet sounding like they weren’t even hitting the ground with how silent they were. 

“I’m putting the couch cushions on the floor.” 

Bucky’s eyes widened. The cushions hit he floor with a dull thud. He looked from the ground, then back up to Steve. 

It almost felt like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be in Arizona the next to weeks so I may not update as regularly as I typically do, but I'll try to post at least a couple times while I'm away!


	7. Chapter Seven

It was night and Steve couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Bucky in some sort of chair, HYDRA playing with his brain like a toy. His stomach churned. Pierce, Rumlow, Rollins, and a slew of other people he’d worked with at one point or another. SHIELD had trusted them, and not only that, Steve had. 

They mixed his head up and he followed them blindly. Memories would come to him in waves, vague outlines of faces, a familiar voice, a smell, a setting, and they’d be gone just as quickly. 

“I would see you,” Bucky said, his voice hoarse, “and not even realize it was you.” Not for a long time. They’d met each other on the bridge, and just the look of familiarity, the sound of his own name coming from Steve, woke something. Then pieces started fitting together. 

He’d known Steve somehow. From where didn’t make sense. It wasn’t clear yet. But they had a past together. Bucky could tell he was more than just someone he had run into a few times. Pierce had said they’d met on a mission and for once, Bucky couldn’t accept it. So he was punished. By the time he and Steve fought on the helicarrier, he didn’t want to believe he knew Steve. Someone who led to punishment, someone who claimed to be his friend when Pierce was telling him otherwise, was someone he shouldn’t be associated with. 

Steve was someone he fought to forget. 

That raced through his mind. By being here, Steve wasn’t sure how much trouble he was creating for Bucky. Was it a struggle just to be in the same room as him when Bucky had convinced himself that Steve was the enemy? As much as they tried to crack jokes to cover what was lurking underneath their patchwork friendship, was the problem even deeper than the years they had lost? 

While Bucky slept on the cushion-less couch, Steve wandered around the vacant building. Some apartments still had bed frames and rusted pots left on their countertops. Some where completely empty. There was one with a silver frame mounted on the wall, a picture of two young girls inside. 

He was nearing the top of the building, an entire wall was missing, ripping apart at least two apartments. The higher up he went, the more things were left behind. Maybe it was more of a hassle to take everything out if they had to climb so many flights of stairs.Whatever had happened here had to have been why everyone left. 

Then he thought about it, the dust that had so firmly settled into every crevice of the building, the gaping holes, the quick abandonment. This happened during New York. It was close enough to the effected area; it would make sense. People left what they didn’t need. They came back for the essentials. 

Why would someone have left behind a picture of their daughters? 

“Oh,” Steve breathed out, his voice rough with realization. 

From behind him, he heard a floorboard squeak. He spun around, arms raised and ready to swing. Bucky stood there, watching Steve for some sort of queue. 

He let out a breath. “Sorry,” Steve said. “It’s a habit.” 

Bucky nodded, as if he knew. He probably did know. 

Steve shook his head. “You know, this building is like this because of us.” He looked over to try and read Bucky’s expression, but he seemed practically unreadable. Steve continued. “The Avengers, I mean.” 

“Your face looks worse.” 

Steve looked at Bucky, clearly startled. 

“The bruise. It looks like it’s swelling up.” He took a few steps forward, eyes fixed on Steve’s cheek. 

He waved his hand, a sign to tell Bucky not to worry. “It’ll be gone in a few hours. Bruises never last long. Does that happen to you too?” Steve wasn’t sure how similar their serums were. Did Bucky heal as fast as Steve did? Did he have as much strength? How did HYDRA’s serum compare to Erskine’s? 

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’ve noticed it more now than I used to. They’d freeze me up after all my missions and I wouldn’t really know how long it took for the damage to heal itself. Or if it healed itself.” 

Steve didn’t like Bucky saying ‘freeze me up’ to refer to what they did to him. It sounded too much like an insider term, like something Rumlow might have said. He knew Rumlow’s humor, or at least a small portion of it. He could be crude, a little rough around the edges, and definitely took some getting used to, if you could stomach him in the first place. He could only imagine what he used to say about Bucky, to his face or not. 

Bucky seemed bothered talking about cryo. He’d seemed bothered ever since they got to the apartment building and Steve and tried to get him to talk about what they used to do it him. But he needed to know. The unknown made him furious and afraid. What did Bucky have to go through all alone? What did he go through and this was normal? 

The first thing that came to Steve’s mind to say was one day this will all be behind you, but the sad truth was he knew it wouldn’t. Bucky wasn’t just going to forget all of this. Bitterness rose up from his chest and he turned away, glancing back out of the opening in the wall. He’d thought Bucky was dead for so long. Then when he found out Bucky was alive, and he wasn’t sure if he would have been better off dead all this time. If he’d fallen off the train and that was that, HYDRA wouldn’t have gotten their hands on him. Bucky wouldn’t have to live in constant inner turmoil.

But then Steve would be alone. 

“Remember how much your ma used to hate our old place?” he asked. “She would wait until she thought I couldn’t hear and complain to you about the smell, the neighborhood, the furniture…” 

“In her defense, you probably couldn’t hear, you just knew she was doing it because I told you.” Steve hadn’t expected Bucky to give a response like that, but the sign of how deep his memories could go made him feel a little better. 

He walked up to join Steve, looking at the view of Manhattan nearby. He could feel the chill from the metal arm. Steve smiled and thought about Bucky always complaining about his cold feet. The way he always whined about how Steve’s hands used to always be freezing. If the situation was right, he might have said something about how they could have used that arm for air conditioning and maybe his mom would have been happier. 

“Believe me, I could hear her. She usually made no effort to keep her voice down.” 

_“They mixed us up at the hospital,”_ they used to say. Steve’s mom was so quiet and Steve never shut his mouth, meanwhile Bucky’s mom was always shouting about something and Bucky kept mostly to himself when he could. Of course, if Steve was a Barnes, the fighting gene would have been smacked out of him so he wouldn’t embarrass the family. 

“Are you ready to go back out tomorrow?” Steve asked. 

“HYDRA’s not going to turn itself in.” 

Steve laughed. “Man, if that were the case, we could be on vacation right now.” When he tried to think about it, he couldn’t remember the last real break he’d ever had. There was always one thing to the next. If Steve kept himself busy, it meant he wouldn’t be thinking about everything else. 

“What makes you happy?” Sam had asked.


	8. Chapter Eight

Bucky met Steve while he had blood smeared across his face. 

“Are you okay?” Bucky asked. 

“‘M fine,” Steve muttered, running his already stained sleeve underneath his nose. 

“I’m Bucky,” he said, sitting down next to him in the dirt.

Steve looked at him wearily and then smiled, introducing himself.

“Your nose is bleeding a lot,” Bucky pointed out, trying to make sure none of it got on him. If his mom saw any blood on his school clothes he would get into trouble, and he didn’t want his mom to be mad at him. 

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned his head back just like his mom taught him. “It’ll stop.” 

“What if it’s broken?” 

Steve laughed. Bucky had never met someone who could laugh while they were bleeding. He liked Steve, even if he seemed a little odd. “If it was broken it would hurt!” 

“It doesn’t hurt?” Bucky’s head tilted to the side, trying to imagine how getting hit in the face wouldn’t hurt Steve. 

He only shrugged, his skinny arms flopping at his side. “Only a little.” 

Every time the story behind Steve’s fight was told, it changed a little bit. When Bucky asked that day, Steve had said it was because a kid told him he wasn’t good enough to play on their baseball team and he would have to play hopscotch with the girls. By the time they were in the war together, he was telling the Howling Commandos that one of the guys was giving Bucky a hard time and he came to step in the middle of it. Bucky never bothered telling them he was the one who convinced the kid to leave Steve alone. 

Just because the story never had the same general plot, they always shared fine details. Steve’s bloody nose and the grin that said he’d stop at nothing. 

***

Bucky paused in front of the building. Steve glanced towards him, raising his eyebrows in question. _You okay?_ Bucky nodded and they slipped inside. 

Silently, they crept through the building, at every corner anticipating to see someone from HYDRA. Maybe someone Steve knew. Instead, the entire building seemed to be completely vacant, like everyone had left in a rush. That wasn’t quite a comfort either. Every silent hallway they were met with, the more they were beginning to dread what was in store for them. Nonetheless, Bucky had his gun ready for whatever would come at them. 

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Steve asked Bucky in a hushed voice, his eyes still searching for some sign of where anyone could be. 

“This is the place.” 

Steve and Bucky spun around when a different voice chimed into their discussion. 

Tony stood before them, coated entirely in armor besides his helmet. He wore the same expression he had as Steve and Bucky ran from the police station. Hatred was mutilating his face.

“Tony, what are you-“ 

“You should have just stayed out of this, Rogers,” he hissed. He spoke to Steve but his gaze was fixed on Bucky. 

“You know I couldn’t do that.” 

“Couldn’t or decided not to?” 

“Where is everyone?” Steve could feel Bucky’s anxiety from next to him. His arms grip on the gun was tight. They had been ready to anticipate a lot today, even talked about seeing people they used to know, but this wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. Tony wasn’t supposed to be here. 

“The police came by a few hours ago. I managed to drop off some useful information when I heard about your goose hunt.” His eyes hardened and finally landed on Steve. “No one had to die. Quick and easy.” 

Steve shook his head. “That doesn’t always mean it’s the right way.” 

“Listen, if you want to defend your old war buddy, fine. Be my guest. But at some point you’re going to have to start taking responsibilities for your actions because while you’re out there playing vigilante, we have to deal with cleaning up your mess.” Tony jabbed his finger in Steve’s direction. 

“Responsibility?” Steve’s voice was cool. With his helmet on, it was easy to tell his glare was needling through to Tony. “Do you want to talk to me about responsibility? How about the fact that you were helping fund and progress a HYDRA project, meanwhile you don’t even take into consideration the fact that the man you’re trying to lock up is the same one who was exploited by HYDRA for years.” 

Tony took a step forward. Bucky’s shoulders constricted, his rifle fixed right on Tony in case he attacked. “Lots of innocent people died because of him. You keep saying that it’s all because HYDRA told him to do it but what’s stopping him now? And instead of trying to get him to stop, it looks like you’re just tagging along for the ride.” 

“They ruined him. He’s mad. How is that any difference from you?” 

“I’m not killing anyone!” That was the point where he’d hit a nerve. The time for giving out chances was nearly over. 

“And how do you know what they’re going to do him if you turn them in?” Steve’s voice was cold. 

Tony shook his head. “Stand down and this will be over. It doesn’t need to be more difficult than it already is.” 

“More convenient for you doesn’t mean better for everyone.” 

Even coated by armor, it was clear that Tony was tense. “You arrogant son-of-a-bitch.” His arm twitched, and it almost looked like he was ready to fire at them. 

Steve braced himself, his shield raised to throw before he could even think about it. 

For one second, Tony’s face fell. He looked betrayed, as if everything he had ever thought about Steve had been shattered. The expression was quickly twisted into detest, into nothing less than hatred. 

“He killed my parents.” It was his last, desperate plea, but also a shrouded threat that he was giving no more chances. “He _killed_ them.” Now Tony’s gaze was fixed on Bucky, his face bathed in loathing. 

Steve tried to remember when he’d seen Bucky look so small. It even seemed like he’d lowered his gun just slightly. This wasn’t the same look he got when he was in trouble at home. This was guilt and regret and a shame above anything else Steve had ever seen. 

“I know.” Bucky’s voice was hoarse. I know meant _I’m sorry, I wish I hadn’t,_ and _I want to take it all back_ in such few words. 

Tony snarled and the Iron Man helmet rose up from the back of the suit, now completely masked in metal. He raised an arm and went to fire a beam at Bucky. His first response was to cover his head with his left arm, an instinct that had been engrained in him, but int his situation, it wouldn’t end well. Steve dove, blocking Bucky with his shield. The beam died.

Just one second later, Steve whipped the shield in Tony’s direction, the vibranium echoing off of the suit, the sound clanging through the air. Steve had seen Tony kill people with much less force than that. No one was going to die here. “You can still walk away from this. We’ll disappear and nothing will happen,” Steve said once Tony had managed to get out of dodge. “We’re not looking for a fight.”

There was no chance for surrender. Instead, Tony launched at Bucky yet again, determined to get whatever it was he came here to do. Negotiation wasn’t on the table. Bucky’s rifle was knocked out of his hands and thrown across the room as Tony rocketed the both of them across the room. 

Steve ran to pick up his shield. Bucky threw a punch at Tony’s helmet, trying to knock him away; if there was some distance between the two of them, it would be easier to attack, but Tony was in too close of quarters. He yelled, pushing Tony away from him, before trying to get a good grip on the helmet. If he could just pry it off… 

The shield ricocheted off the back of the neck of Tony’s armor. Steve jumped to catch it, spun, threw it back. The force of the vibranium knocked Tony back as he tried to turn around. He landed on a knee. Bucky shot back up, his fist slammed into the side of the the helmet. Steve grabbed Tony’s shoulders and threw him back. 

“It wasn’t him. Leave him out of this.” 

Tony swung his arm back, backhanding Steve. The edges of the suit left bloody imprints in his cheek. Steve barely staggered back before knocking his elbow into the crook of Tony’s neck but he fought back. He shot at Steve’s back, knocking him a few feet forward, falling flat on his stomach. 

Steve grunted, trying to push himself up but before he could even have a chance he was hit with another beam in his side. He rolled over. Bucky ran up, his boot rising to kick Tony back. He skidded across the floor. The harder he tried to regain his footing, the more clear it was that his suit wasn’t going to help him slow down. Tony’s thrusters shot on, and he hovered above the ground for a minute, just before rocketing towards where Bucky stood. 

Bucky plowed himself into Tony’s chest, pushing him back, despite all of the effort the thrusters gave to propel him forward. 

Steve was back up on his feet. The shield flew in Tony’s direction, hitting him right in the helmet and throwing him off. The thrusters shut off and he landed clumsily to his feet. Bucky caught the shield, knocking it down into the side of the armor before tossing it back to Steve, his other fist knocking into the helmet again. 

The dents were beginning to be incredibly visible. They were doing a number on the suit, but until he stood down and said he wouldn’t throw Bucky away, they wouldn’t quit. Steve was focused. There was only one objective, one outcome that would be acceptable, and it was getting Bucky out of here safe and alive. That meant he was focused on what Bucky was doing, what Tony was doing to counter Bucky, what he was doing to prevent Tony from countering Bucky. His mind was everywhere but they had to get out of this okay.

Tony’s fist knocked into Steve’s face. The shield slipped from his hand and as he staggered back, he thought about everything he’d done wrong. He wasn’t focused. His mind was everywhere but here. 

Bucky jumped at the chance to grab the shield, held it tightly in his hands with force and control. He bashed it into Tony’s helmet, the front beginning to hang loosely. With the shield still close to his body, Bucky pried the front off with his metal fingers and tossed it across the room. Tony blasted Bucky back. He rolled, the shield scattering away from him, too far out of reach for either of them to get. 

Steve tackled him, holding him to the ground. Without the safety of a helmet, he was positive he could get him to stay down. 

Temporarily, he was so blinded he could barely think. His mind was full of white hot rage. Either finish this or Bucky is gone. That ran through his head like a promise. If this wasn’t done, Tony would take him away and who knew what hands Bucky would fall into then. 

He brought his punches down sporadically. He could barely control it but didn’t bother to try. Tony looked mortified, almost too stunned to fight back. It was as if something had broken open within Steve. Everything he’d been keeping inside, all of the things he’d built up. Tony funded HYDRA. Tony was willing to sell Bucky out without knowing what they would do to him. Steve was never going to put Bucky through anything without an ambiguous ending ever again. 

Suddenly he was aware of himself. His chest heaved, sweat dripped from underneath his helmet. Blood ran from his nose and his cheek. Underneath his leather gloves, he could feel his knuckles were sore. 

One last time, Steve’s fist sank into Tony’s face, already bruised and smeared with blood. He wasn’t sure if Tony was just stunned or if something was broken, but he didn’t get up. Steve climbed off, faltering to get to his feet. 

He walked towards Bucky, who stood by ready for a moment where he could jump in. Steve wiped his face off with his sleeve. 

Tony stayed down. 

***

The room was quiet. If it were possible, the worn down, abandoned house in upstate New York was less homey than the destroyed apartment buildings in Manhattan but they were closer to Rumlow now. They’d gotten his location more easily than they would have anticipated. It could only mean one thing: he wanted to be found. 

“How are you doing?” Steve asked, patting down his face with a washcloth of questionable sanitation. 

Bucky nodded. He was fine. “How’s your nose? Not broken, is it?” 

Steve shook his head. “I’m fine.” 

They both leaned up against the wall in the kitchen. A stained stove remained, along with countertops that had probably seen the wrath of hundreds of groups of high school students trying to make something exciting of their Friday nights. 

The city apartments breathed, but the abandoned house moaned. At least Steve could rest easy knowing the Avengers weren’t the reason this house met its demise but there was a history here deeper than they would have known. 

If he tried hard enough, Steve could pretend this was like the old days. Together, in a building that needed far more fixes than they could afford, Steve dabbing blood off of his face, Bucky in rough shape after following him into the trouble. He couldn’t get Tony’s expression out of his mind but Bucky was safe. No one was going to lay a hand on him. 

They would head out tomorrow morning and find Rumlow and fight like hell until he was dead. It was the only solution. He’d managed to get out of prison once, there was no point in sending him back so he could do it again. 

There were some people not worth trying to find the good in. 

After he was gone, Steve would try and help Bucky find his place in the new world. It was what he needed to do. He was part of the reason the government was on the hung for him. No, he had no responsibility over what happened when he was the Winter Soldier, but he broke him out when he was captured. Bucky would probably get into more trouble after that. But Steve wasn’t in good standing after what he’d done either. He was in no rush to get back to society and reclaim the Captain America title. That could wait. Bucky came first. 

But then again, if Steve brought Bucky to fight Rumlow, who knew what would happen. Would Rumlow have something up his sleeve to get Bucky back? And he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t drag Bucky into a situation with an ambiguous outcome. Rumlow was a loose cannon. 

“Let’s get some sleep,” Steve said, walking towards the unsteady stairs in front of the doorway. “We’ve got to be ready for tomorrow. We can’t miss anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long to upload. I had the worst writer's block writing this chapter but it's finally done!


	9. Chapter Nine

Before the sun came up, the house was looked more empty than when they snuck in. Steve scanned the room. Bucky was still asleep on the floor, tucked into the towels they’d found in the linen closet. With how little there was left in the house, it was the best they could do in the way of blankets. 

He sat up, very careful to make sure none of his movements would wake Bucky up. He’d made his choice last night. Bucky couldn’t get involved with Rumlow. There were too many unknown outcomes. Without a doubt, this was a trap. Rumlow knew they were coming and they didn’t know what he had up his sleeve or what he would do to get Bucky back. 

Moving throughout the house noiselessly was difficult, especially if Bucky was as light of a sleeper post-serum as Steve was. Back in New York, the two of them could sleep through anything. But the floorboards were worn and creaked under his weight every other step. 

Steve slipped into the remaining parts of his Cap uniform, only taking off bits and pieces to get to bed. Rumlow would be prepared and Steve couldn’t show up any less than that. It was going to end today. Rumlow wasn’t going to get to run around anymore terrorizing anyone. He would never get the satisfaction of fulfilling whatever vision he had for HYDRA. 

Bucky was still motionless on the ground. He seemed pretty asleep. Steve crept out the door, passing one last glance behind him. Whatever happened today, it was going to be the end. 

He thought of Rumlow as a friend. He’d seen them as someone he could trust. Then he’d turned around and thrown this on the table. All along, Rumlow had known Bucky. It seemed sick that he knew Bucky was alive while Steve walked around in the dark. 

***

“Hey Cap!” 

The bar was crowded, as was typical after a debriefing. Full of STRIKE and SHIELD agents. Steve sat by himself right at the bar, old fashioned in hand, while everyone else moved around him. When everyone was drunk, it was a little easier for him to blend in. That was, until Rumlow called him from the table near a dartboard. 

“Come on over. We’ve got room.”

It’d been a few months since Steve had started working alongside the STRIKE department, a few months since he’d gotten out of training, a few months into a new lifetime. It was taking some time to get used to. 

Steve picked up his drink and walked over to the group Rumlow was sitting with. He was a good enough guy, and he was really trying to help Steve feel at home as best he could. He appreciated the effort, even if Rumlow was a little hard to get behind at first. 

His group was rowdy, which was typical for STRIKE. They were buzzed and in a lighter mood then they’d been all day, which meant louder. But sometimes louder acted as a reminder of the way things used to be. 

He couldn’t get drunk with the Howling Commandos either but they included him in a way that made it easy for him to forget that. Bucky, hunched over a bottle of scotch, always laughed and talked about how Steve seemed just as giddy as he used to get after two beers. It was funny how “the way things used to be” had changed so much since then. 

STRIKE didn’t carry the same sort of familiarity. 

“You might want to watch how you take your drinks around here,” Rumlow said, leaning towards Steve. “Everyone might give you a hard time after they find out your order.” 

Steve laughed, hanging his head. “When you can’t get drunk, I guess you just drink for taste.” 

Rumlow shook his head. “Man, that’s the one situation where I think I don’t want to be you.” 

A group a few feet away from them, near the dartboard, cheered. A man threw his arms up victoriously, a smug grin spread across his face. The others, about four or five, threw back shot glasses. 

“You’re not interested in darts then?” Steve asked. 

“Nah, I’d smoke these guys. It would be unfair if I played. Besides, I hate seeing old people drinking alone. Makes me too sad.” 

Steve quirked an eyebrow up. Everyone else had been skirting around the truth, trying to be delicate with his feelings, but it seemed like Rumlow wasn’t going to play the same sort of games. It was a relief. Spending the majority of the time watching people tiptoe around him like at any moment he would fall to pieces was exhausting and vaguely familiar. It was like the way everyone would baby him when before the serum. 

“I appreciate your concern for the elderly,” Steve replied. He glanced over at the large group at the dartboard. 

Rumlow followed where he was looking. “You’ve played before, right?” 

He laughed. “Yes, I’ve played. It’s been a while though. Nothing like that though,” Steve said, nudging his head toward the dart players. “I’m still trying to figure out the rules.”

With a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders, Rumlow said, “Pretty easy. If someone gets a bullseye, everyone else takes a drink.” Steve smirked. To think he’d thought it was more complex than that. Rumlow added, “Come on. They’re all shitty at this. None of them are drunk enough.”

As they got nearer, the group began to cheer. In close quarters, the smell of alcohol was almost overpowering. A mix of liquor and body oder, yet none of the guys seemed to notice. It was overly apparent to Steve, but Rumlow just smirked. 

Someone passed him one of the green darts. He fixed his stance, aiming the dart before throwing it across to the board, hitting it straight in the middle. The men yelled, raising a drink. 

“Gotta get Cap something!” Rumlow yelled over the commotion, and within a few seconds, a shot glass was passed in Steve’s direction. 

He took it and watched everyone tip their glasses back, following suit. It went down quickly, and Rumlow stood by looking smug at his success. 

***

The world was made up of more abandoned buildings than Steve ever thought he would see. New York itself, seemed so congested, the idea that there could ever be an uninhabited building anywhere seemed impossible. And yet within the past week alone he’d seen more than his fair share. Empty parking lots, vacated towns, disregarded barns.

It was insane but he thought he had to have seen them all. Yet here he stood in front of a warehouse. A majority of windows were smashed in. Graffiti decorated the brick, but even that seemed to be worn, like no one had bothered to give this place a second glance within the last few years. 

What did make it stand out was the black SUV parked out in front with no one around, which could only leave Steve to assume they were all waiting inside. But what was one against the remnants of STRIKE? He’d done it once before. 

It took more than he would have expected to convince himself to go inside. When he’d snuck out of the house, he was in the mindset to get everything done and get out of there before the day was over. He was determined and he had his plan down. But now there was hesitation in his step. It was very unlike Steve. 

Swallowing his pride, he took a moment. Rumlow’s crew went down first. They would only get in the way and Steve wanted to be sure that he gave Rumlow the death he deserved after all the hell he’d raised. It would be over and he’d find Bucky. Steve was certain he wouldn’t be thrilled that he’d gone through it all without him there, but he would explain he wasn’t going to risk it. Getting revenge on Rumlow was important to Bucky, but keeping Bucky safe was more important to Steve. 

Steve took one last second to gather his breath, then stood up from where he was crouched behind the piles of broken crates stacked on the side of the road across from the warehouse. HYDRA certainly did have a type when it came to their ominous locations. 

Half-running, half-walking, Steve pressed his back against the cold side of the building, sticking his head through the doorway to see if he could catch any movement before going inside. 

The room was still. 

He waited. Still nothing. They must have known he was here and were going to try to catch him off guard. Every one of Steve’s nerves felt like they were on fire. Under no circumstances could he be thrown off. They were more prepared for him than he was anticipating. 

Walking through the mostly empty factory, his footsteps echoed. If they already knew he’d gotten here, it was better to get it over with than to stay tense with the anticipation of an attack at any minute. Let them know he was ready for them. 

His spine was taut. His fingertips itched with worry, unsure of what to do and how to prepare for whatever was going to pop out from any corner. 

This situation wasn’t completely unique. There had been plenty of missions where he wasn’t sure what was in store for him. The past week alone had been filled with many of those moments. When he stepped into that barn to find Bucky, he wasn’t sure what would happen, or if he would even be remembered. Ambiguity wasn’t the problem. 

The problem was that Steve needed this. He needed to feel Rumlow’s bones break underneath his fists. He was eager to know this was over with and know that it was done right because he’d done it himself. It was a duty he didn’t trust with anyone else. He wanted it so much that he felt like there was a danger of him skimming over anyone else who got in his way. Any of Rumlow’s men could get back up and start fighting again because he hadn’t thought to properly finish them either. 

“You seem a little occupied right now, Rogers.” 

Even though the voice came off as friendly and conversational, Steve’s chest seized up and brain was taken over by an overwhelming amount of noise. 

He spun around to see Rumlow standing there, coated in a variation of the same armor he’d worn when Steve and Sam found him. 

“Sticking me back behind bars wasn’t your best idea,” Rumlow continued. “Ya see, HYDRA managed to find a little bit of home everywhere.” From behind his mask, he saw his eyes skim the rest of the room. “No Barnes? Damn, I was excited to see him again. Just like old times.” 

“You won’t ever get to hurt him again,” Steve hissed. His chest burned. His body was ready to attack but wouldn’t move at the same time. All he could think about was how deep the betrayal ran with him. The bastard paraded around pretending to be his friend, when all along he knew that Bucky was alive. He wouldn’t let that fact die. 

Rumlow’s eyes turned up underneath his mask into what Steve could only assume was a dangerous smirk. “Who said anything about hurting him? We’re all buddies here, right?” 

Steve looked around the room yet again. 

“No one else is here,” Rumlow said, breaking Steve’s silence. “Just you and me.”

“Why?” Steve asked, icily. 

A dark chuckle came from underneath his helmet. “Didn’t seem right to draw a crowd to something like this.” 

The air was still and stiff. Sweat crawled down Steve’s spine but he refused to break eye contact with Rumlow. They both knew something was going to happen here but both of them believed they would be the one who would be walking out. 

The only difference was Steve was right. 

***

A few miles down the road, Bucky was doing his best to catch up. By the time he was awake, Steve was long gone, which left him having to run to catch up. Leave it to Steve to think this was going to be something he could handle on his own. Couldn’t stop and think for a minute about the consequences of going at this head on. 

He swore under his breath as he stood in a pretty empty area, knowing he couldn’t be far but wasn’t close enough. 

Steve was probably already there. He was probably already in the middle of something stupid. Bucky just had to be there in time to do damage control. The fact that Rumlow was there was an afterthought at this point. His mind was so occupied in making sure Steve was safe, he hardly had the time to consider any other alternatives. 

***

The fight was short and messy. Fists bashed into teeth, things were broken, both bones and objects around the warehouse. But Steve knew he was doing more damage to Rumlow than the other way around. 

That was until he brought out the gun. 

Steve’s mind froze as he stared at it for a second, which felt more like a full minute. Then the fight wasn’t just about taking Rumlow down. It became even more about a matter of survival. He dodged the barrel of the gun, knocking Rumlow’s aim away from him so he misfired.

“You can’t escape this, Rogers,” Rumlow growled. Beneath his dented helmet, his words blurred together but there was no sign of him going down soon. He still had enough fight in him to be a threat. 

He tried to piece the situation together in his head. If Steve broke his wrist, Rumlow wouldn’t be able to hold the gun, at least not in his dominant hand. If he was forced to use his non-dominant hand, his aim would be less accurate. 

As he reached out to grab Rumlow’s wrist, he countered, using the proximity to grab ahold of Steve’s helmet and knock it against his knee cap. He stumbled before catching himself, reaching up and yanking Rumlow down. He flipped before landing on his back, temporarily stunned by how quickly Steve had moved. 

Steve knelt on top of him, using one hand to hold Rumlow in his place, the other to bash the shield against his mask several times. The front piece beginning to get loose on the top. He pried at it until it came off, then tossed it across the room and without a second of hesitation, hammered his fist down. Things cracked underneath his fist. His knuckles screamed for him to stop but he didn’t. When blood began splashing up, Steve stopped. He had expected to see Rumlow’s shocked expression, something that told Steve he knew what was coming. Instead, he wasn’t even looking at Steve. 

Rumlow’s eyes were diverted across the room, towards where Steve had come in. He wore a nasty smirk. “Hey pal,” he spat, blood sputtering from his split lip. 

_No,_ Steve thought immediately. 

Bucky stood in the large opening, hands wrapped into tight fists. His eyes caught right onto Rumlow but he didn’t seem to know what to do. He glanced at Steve, who had turned over his shoulder to look at him. 

“Things like these just make me feel so nostalgic,” Rumlow said, and at first Steve thought he was mocking them. How they both knew that nothing could ever be exactly like they used to be in the past. 

Five rapid shots rang through the empty warehouse. It took Steve two seconds to process that Rumlow wasn’t mocking them. That was a threat. Bucky being under HYDRA’s control was the previous time. Steve’s breath caught in his throat as the pain in his abdomen became overwhelming. The air was thin in his lungs, but giving up meant that Bucky would never be safe. 

_I’m dying,_ he thought. The same thought that ran through his head when he saw the ice creeping closer towards the windows on Red Skull’s plane. If he was going to die, there was one thing he needed to do first. 

Steve sucked air in and rose the shield above his head. The grin vanished from Rumlow’s face as Steve sped the shield down, vibranium colliding with Rumlow’s neck, followed by a revolting squish and snap. 

Rumlow’s head rolled from his body, his limbs momentarily twitching before not moving all together. Blood followed where his head went, his neck still spouting blood in quick bursts. 

The shield fell down by Steve’s side, spinning a few inches away from him. He could hear footsteps but the noise of the room just turned into ringing in his eardrums. His fingertips felt completely numb. 

Suddenly, he was being held. The top half of his body was propped up. Bucky was hovering above him. “Steve,” his lips read. His gaze darted all over Steve’s body, particularly at the blood spitting out from the gunshots in his stomach.

His right hand hovered over the wound, but he knew no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop Steve from bleeding out. He would only stall it.

Bucky opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. There was blood everywhere, Bucky’s lap drenched in it. He couldn’t tell what was Steve’s and what was Rumlow’s. He couldn’t focus on anything but Steve’s eyes, they way they stared so directly into Bucky’s. 

“I did it, pal,” Steve choked out, the faintest smile Bucky had ever seen on his face. How could he smile at a time like this? There was nothing to smile about. _You’re safe,_ he could hear Steve say in his head. If this was what safety meant, Bucky didn’t want it.

His fingertips trembled as he felt blood slipping out from the cracks. He was too late. He wanted to take it all back. His mind darted from thought to thought, all while staying incredibly focused on Steve. 

“I always told you not to do anything stupid if I couldn’t be there to clean up your mess,” Bucky whispered, shaking his head. He could feel his face getting hot. His throat felt swollen. 

Steve coughed, blood tricking out of his mouth. Bucky tried to prop him up more. There had to be something he could do. Anything. He was desperate. 

_Please,_ he begged. _Don’t let him die. He can’t die._

Steve sucked in another sharp inhale Bucky could feel how tense his back was, as if he was trying to find the right position to ease the pain. “There’ll be plenty more of my messes to clean up,” he said. 

He didn’t take the time to figure out what Steve was trying to say. He just pressed down harder on the wound. 

Steve groaned from the pressure, his eyes squeezed shut under the pain until he could breathe it out. 

“What were you thinking going into this without backup?” Bucky asked. He wanted to keep his voice even and keep up the front that everything was going to be fine. Steve managed to do it even though he had to know his fate just as much as Bucky did. 

Steve didn’t need to answer. His explanation was written all over his face in the moments it wasn’t spasming. Despite it all, he seemed relieved. He’d done what he’d come to do. He’d gotten rid of Rumlow, and that meant Rumlow could never go after Bucky again. 

Ever since they’d met, Bucky saw it as his job to keep Steve safe from whatever he got himself into. When it turned out he was alive, Steve vowed to do the same for Bucky and he had. Bucky was alive and Rumlow wasn’t. It didn’t matter what the cost was. It never had. 

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky breathed, shaking his head. His chin trembled. He cleared his throat and looked back up at Steve’s face. _What am I going to do without you?_

The words never came out. The muscles in Steve’s back started sinking into Bucky’s lap. His face faltered. Steve’s smile slowly fell away, his eyes falling from Bucky’s. 

He lost his breath. “Steve?” Bucky asked urgently, his hand moving from Steve’s stomach to his chest, to his throat, to his cheek. Steve’s blood followed him everywhere he went, like he wasn’t able to escape the overwhelming reality of death. 

This wasn’t possible. Steve couldn’t die. He needed him. He needed things to be okay. They’d just found each other again. 

“Steve!” Bucky yelled. The desperation in his voice echoed off of ever concrete inch of the building until his own screams were overbearing. 

He held Steve up, his body, to his chest, pressing his face into the crook of his neck. Blood smeared across his forehead but he couldn’t be bothered to care. 

There had been a time when Steve had gone through this. He had to watch Bucky die. He had to live with knowing that he wouldn’t come back. Was this the universe’s revenge for that being a lie all along? Was this payback for Bucky surviving the fall? 

“I need you to wake up,” Bucky pleaded. 

He never did.


	10. Chapter 10

Bucky moved through the next few days as a phantom. Numb and unable to take his mind off of the look on Steve’s face when he saw Bucky in the warehouse. He was a distraction. If he’d gotten there sooner, he could have stopped it from happening. If he’d gotten there later, Steve would have been able to stop Rumlow himself, free of complications. 

Headlines began popping up immediately. 

_Nation Wakes To Fallen Hero_

A large picture of Steve, rather, Captain America, plastered just underneath, mustered up at his most patriotic. His gloved hand brought to his forehead in a triumphant salut. The portrait of a perfect hero. 

Slowly, Bucky began developing a collection of the articles. Incriminating evidence that his best friend was dead, maybe not by his hand, but Bucky felt as if it was still his fault. He shouldn’t have shown up. He should have shown up earlier. He shouldn’t have ever let Steve out of his sight. There could have been so many ways for this to be prevented. 

The funeral was approaching. Natasha had found him in the rundown apartment he and Steve had stayed in before they ran into Tony. “You know you can’t go, right?” she asked, leaning against the worn walls, her arms crossed over his chest. 

Bucky didn’t respond. He sat on the caved in couch, his elbows pressed into the tops of his kneecaps. He knew. Steve’s death didn’t change anything. He was still wanted by the government and they weren’t going to give him a grieving period. If anything, his death would have added fuel to the fire. It had been Rumlow who killed him. It would be easy to put the two of them together and say that the Winter Soldier was in on it. 

“He went through too much to make sure they wouldn’t get you,” Natasha said when Bucky remained silent. 

He sighed and closed his eyes tightly. His fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose. Of course he knew that. If Steve wasn’t such an idiot he would still be alive. Or maybe if Steve wasn’t such an idiot he would be dead because he never would have made it out of the 40s. 

Natasha shook her head. “I told him not to do anything stupid.” 

A dark chuckle came from where Bucky sat. “That was always a sure way to stop him.” 

She looked at him, eyebrows knitted together, watching him curiously. “I never told him about how we used to know each other.” Her heels hit the floor as she approached him cautiously. When Bucky’s gaze never rose from the floor, Natasha continued. “I always tried to block that part of my life out. Then you came back and it seemed like Steve and I both had the Ghost of Christmas Past walking around in our lives.” 

He looked up. Her face was uncertain, as if she didn’t want to give away too much of the emotion she was feeling away, but for the first time he could remember, Bucky could read her. She felt almost as lost as he did. “I should have just stayed dead.” 

The couch sank as Natasha lowered herself next to him. “It wasn’t your fault. You never would have chosen this for yourself.” She clasped her fingers together. “We all got mixed up in this. I spent so much time trying to convince myself that I’d changed and that I would do what was good. But then there were so many things that could be masked as good. It was about finding the one that was right.” 

“Did you do that?” 

There was a pause. A draft pulled through the room. Bucky’s eyes shifted to the duffle he packed that was thrown on the floor. 

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “SHIELD was supposed to be my first good deed but then SHIELD took off its mask and showed itself as HYDRA. Then I thought I could rely on being an Avenger but then the Avengers split and Steve and Tony were at odds. I knew Tony wanted us to side with him. But Steve was fighting for you, and you were always my favorite teacher.” She looked over her shoulder. Her eyes were damp but she smiled. 

Bucky’s lips quirked up as genuinely as they could, but then his smile faltered. “It doesn’t seem right that I’m not going.” He stood up and began pacing the floor, the boards creaking beneath him. The sound could transport him back in time long enough to almost sooth him until he remembered where he really was. “I went to his dad’s funeral, I went to his ma’s funeral…” Bucky trailed off. 

He should be going to Steve’s funeral. 

“He knew how much you cared about him,” Natasha said, trying to back him down from a ledge. 

“This isn’t about that.” 

“Then what’s it about?” 

Bucky’s fist clenched and unclenched. His brain was tugging him hundreds of different directions. _I just want to say goodbye one last time._

The couch creaked and yet again, Bucky could hear Natasha’s footsteps approaching him. “He died once to stop HYDRA just to wake up and find out it was still out there. He died to save you from them. Don’t let it be for nothing.” 

He swallowed hard. 

She grabbed his hand, opening his fingers and placing a small flip phone in his palm. “This is for you, in case you need anything.” 

“Like what?” 

She looked over Bucky’s shoulder distantly, like she wasn’t quite sure what to say, or where to begin. “For anything.” She glanced at the phone, then back up at Bucky before nodding and turning over her shoulder. The sound of her footsteps faded as she left the apartment building without saying anything else. 

A pause drew out. The building sighed, the floorboards squeaking with each draft. Bucky’s chest felt tight, as if his skin was beginning to shrink over his bones. Hitched breaths clawed their way past his throat, his arm tightening up yet again into a fist. 

Before he had time to think, metal collided with peeling paint. Drywall crumbled at his feet. 

Bucky’s breath grew heavier as he circled around the apartment, as if doing laps would prevent the room from closing in on him. The phone slipped out of his hand and landed on the ground with a dull thud. His metal arm twitched as his brain raced. His right hand drew up and under the sleeve of his t-shirt, beginning to scratch where the skin met the metal. He wanted to be free from from everything HYDRA had thrown on him. Every scream, every mission and demand, the damned metal arm. He wanted no part of it. 

A small sob broke free. First white hot marks turned bright red as Bucky’s scratching grew harder, more desperate. He grunted, prying at the scarred skin that had tried to make its home over his replacement arm. Blood began seeping underneath his fingernails, running down his shoulder at a slow pace, and soaking up into the material that hung over his shoulder. 

“I don’t want this,” he cried. His voice came out hoarse and ragged. He sank down onto his knees, his right hand a fist against the ground, holding him up for support. His left hand hung limp next to him. He shook his head, clenching his eyes shut as he felt his throat close up and his face get hot. His hand hit the ground again. 

For a long time he knelt on the ground, trying to catch his breath, thinking of how he could separate himself so completely from HYDRA, the way Steve had always fought so hard to do. This wasn’t just a fight for himself anymore. Too much had been lost over its survival. 

The sun sank down and the apartment grew dark. 

*** 

_I need to go to his apartment._

Bucky typed the words when he knew he should have been sleeping but sleep refused to find him. All he could think about was the fast approaching funeral and the stories the newspapers were printing.

He kept all of the articles, swiping them as he found them, and reading them greedily. They were looking for him, just like Natasha promised they would be. Of course, the articles talked about Rumlow and his affiliation with HYDRA. No one explicitly blamed Bucky for Steve’s death. No one knew he’d been there. 

He’d tipped off the police and hid. He watched as the ambulance took Steve away and the paramedics baffled over what to do with the bloody remains of Rumlow and his head. But even after Steve was taken away, Bucky was still glued to his hiding spot. He knew he was wrong, but he felt like Steve was going to show up, as if his death hadn’t been real, and if Bucky left, he would miss him. 

Steve never showed up but the police did, muttering to each other about what a _fucking mess _the scene was.__

__Bucky slipped away unnoticed and was confronted with the uncertainty of where he was supposed to go. He wanted to hide at Steve’s. The familiarity, even if he’d never been there, called to him. But he knew it was out of the question. Police would be crawling all over it. Security would be outside of the building, waiting for intruders, possible HYDRA agents. Waiting for Bucky._ _

__He went the only place he could assume would be safe. Some place that still had an echo of Steve. It was the best he could do._ _

___You know that’s dangerous._ _ _

__Natasha’s reply came within a few minutes of Bucky’s initial message. He was surprised that she would have responded so soon. Not so much that she was awake, but that she would have taken such a short period of time to mull over what she would say back to him._ _

__One second later, the flip phone buzzed again._ _

___Come by a few hours before the funeral, around 9._ _ _

__Relief flooded through Bucky’s veins. He couldn’t be alone while everyone else was at the funeral. He’d be alone in the apartment, but he could be alone all around Steve. If he wasn’t there, he’d have to go somewhere public to watch the funeral, and he knew that wouldn’t fly well if Natasha found out._ _

__He wanted to thank her. There were so many different things he wanted to say but at this point he wasn’t sure if anything he had to say would do any good._ _

__Instead, he pushed his palm into his eye, then stared at the ceiling. _I just want to say goodbye, _he thought.___ _

____***_ _ _ _

____Bucky’s heart dragged in his chest as he stood in front of Steve’s door. Natasha stood by his side, her gaze fixed ahead just the same as Bucky’s. Her fingers fished into her pocket. A small silver key emerged._ _ _ _

____Just like she had with the flip phone, she took Bucky’s hand, and stretched his fingers out. The key felt cold against his palm, even though it had been pressed against Natasha’s hip this whole time._ _ _ _

____“Be careful,” she said, her fingers still brushed up against the key. She looked at him for a minute, eyes flicking across his face before she turned to walk away._ _ _ _

____Bucky caught her wrist. “Say goodbye for me, will you?”_ _ _ _

____Natasha opened her mouth for a minute, unsure of what to say. She closed her lips, eyes starting to glaze over partially, and nodded._ _ _ _

____Slowly, Bucky unwound his loose grip from her. Instead of immediately walking away, she skimmed his face yet again. The concern in his expression, the sincerity of it all, she knew this was what Steve had been hoping for, what he’d expected every time he said he wanted to help Bucky. And it was here just because Steve was gone._ _ _ _

____“I will,” Natasha said, masking the waver in her voice._ _ _ _

____***_ _ _ _

____Steve’s apartment was familiar in the way that it had the same feeling as his old Brooklyn apartment with Bucky. There wasn’t a whole lot in it but just enough odds and ends to make it clear that someone lived there._ _ _ _

____It was cleaner than the Brooklyn apartment though. The military could do that. And it seemed like the life of Captain America didn’t leave as much time for artwork as being a newspaper delivery boy. There weren’t sketchbooks lying around like there used to be._ _ _ _

____As Bucky wandered around, he found spare scratch paper covered in small little doodles. Some with a few sketches of the historic buildings the view outside his window reached._ _ _ _

____His right hand ghosted over the paper, as if by touching something Steve had touched, he would still feel him._ _ _ _

____He didn’t like being here alone. He didn’t like being here period. There was emptiness with everything Steve owned still being in there. An absence of life, maybe. Like the building knew Steve wasn’t coming back and was preparing to shut itself down until someone new moved in._ _ _ _

____The bedroom door was wide open. Steve always kept his door open just a crack. He never wanted Bucky to go around without permission, not that a mostly closed door would ever keep him from snooping around. But it was their agreement. Steve’s door would never be fully shut, but shut enough to get the message across to Bucky. Maybe living alone had broken the habit._ _ _ _

____Bucky’s footsteps felt too heavy, but his limbs were barely obeying him. Every bit of his body felt like it weighed too much, beginning at his chest and running down. Gravity was pressing too much on him._ _ _ _

____His eyes fell onto a garment bag on the bed but he was quickly distracted by a box up against the wall of the kitchen. Numbly, he walked toward it, stacks of pictures lined up. Despite how light the box was, it took almost all of Bucky’s effort to pick it up and walk it over to the couch._ _ _ _

____Gently, he set the cardboard on top of the wooden coffee table Steve had set in his living room. With hesitancy, he began flipping through the pictures. Some of them were art prints, most likely ones he’d intended on hanging up eventually. Steve never pictured himself living there long. It always felt temporary._ _ _ _

____The further back in the stack Bucky got, the more faded the photos began to be, until they were black and whites. Pictures of the Howling Commandos, old colonels, commanders, everyone they’d worked with during the war. He stopped at a picture of the five of them together. His eyes landed on Steve, at the front of the crowd, looking confident and prepared for every fight headed his way._ _ _ _

____He was always meant to symbolize something, but his self-assurance almost seemed so unusual when Bucky was so used to the beaten and bloody Steve from before they’d gotten here._ _ _ _

____It all used to be so simple. There was a time when the biggest thing that happened to either of them was Bucky getting drafted._ _ _ _

____Then, all of the sudden, it was 2016 and the day of Steve’s funeral._ _ _ _

____A remote sat on the coffee table. Bucky picked it up carefully, staring at it with caution. Bracing himself, he turned the TV on, watching it hum to life. Already, it was on a news station. And of course, today of all days, the news was discussing Steve._ _ _ _

____Tony Stark stood at a podium, his arm fixed in a sling, a black ring around his eye. Beneath his face it read, ‘Stark comments on feud with Captan Rogers’._ _ _ _

____“Captain Rogers and I were frequently at odds with each other,” Tony said, occasionally looking up from the notecards on the podium in front of him to look at all of the cameras. He had an air about him, one he was taught early in his life, that he was speaking to each of the members of the press. This conference was for all of them, and all of the people who happened to be watching._ _ _ _

____Bucky was certain if Tony knew Bucky was watching, this speech wouldn’t be for him._ _ _ _

____“Unfortunately, this feud existed up to the time of his death. If I could go back and change it all, I would. Working with Steve Rogers was an honor and a dream of mine since my childhood and it’s a tragedy that we had to lose him the way we did.”_ _ _ _

____The picture changed to two men discussing the content of Tony’s speech, praising the sincerity and the regret that Tony expressed._ _ _ _

____“His ability to let go of the feud with such dignity is admirable,” one of the men said._ _ _ _

____The second one nodded. “You’re absolutely right. Despite all of what he’d been through, knowing that at the end of the day, Tony Stark was able to forgive the man defending the one who killed his parents, and Steve Rogers was able to regain a friend at the time of his death.”_ _ _ _

____Bucky quickly changed the station, trying to keep the pain in his chest to a simmer. He couldn’t punch at the walls here the same way he could in the old apartment building Natasha had found him in._ _ _ _

____The next station was another news channel, this one with cameras fixed on a cathedral, with people filing in and moving about. The beginnings of the funeral._ _ _ _

____His palm began to sweat. He rubbed it against his pant leg but he couldn’t get himself to calm down. Against his chest, his heart began to tremble. The lump in his throat was beginning to feel larger and larger to the point where he was wondering if he’d be able to swallow at all._ _ _ _

____Occasionally the camera would pan in to notable guests, a name title popping up underneath, explaining who they were._ _ _ _

_____I should be there_ kept echoing through his head. A bitterness floored through his veins but suddenly, the camera zoomed and he saw a few of the Avengers. Clint, the one he’d met in the barn, and Sam, who he’d never gotten the chance to meet in his right mind, but who’s face he could recognize. _ _ _ _

____Bucky shook his head. Guilt was in each of their expressions but none of them had anything to feel guilty about. They didn’t know where Steve was. They weren’t the one who was supposed to go with Steve to take care of Rumlow. That was supposed to be Bucky and he failed him._ _ _ _

____“Ladies and gentleman, if you could find your seats.”_ _ _ _

____His heart surged in his chest as he fixed on the man who stood in front of the assembly. So many people had shown up. So many people going to their seats from the closed casket where they stood originally._ _ _ _

____Bucky’s palm pressed against his forehead as the minister spoke kind words of Steve, all the good he’d done for the world up to the very last second. He’d saved countless cities, saved so many civilians, done everything he could to protect everyone, taking his duties as an Avenger incredibly seriously._ _ _ _

____Bucky shook his head. Steve had done that long before he was an Avenger. He’d done it before the concept of the Avengers as a group was even considered. He saw that as his job before Captain America was conceptualized. Straight from the start, Steve Rogers put it on his shoulders to keep people safe, no matter what the cost was for himself._ _ _ _

____And there he was, laying inside a casket at the very front of the room, with all of those eyes fixed upon the wood that kept him hidden._ _ _ _

____For so long he fought to keep so many people safe, and he went down just for Bucky._ _ _ _

____Sam walked to the front of the cathedral, hands quivering as they reached for a modest set of notecards that he placed in front of him in the second before he began to read._ _ _ _

____“I didn’t know Steve Rogers very long. I knew him a shorter period of time than I think was right. We met because he was a show-off, but throughout our friendship, he showed me every reason he deserved to be a show-off. In times he meant to, and in times he didn’t, he proved to me why he was Captain America. He proved to me that not just anyone could be Captain America; it had to be someone who was willing to do what was right, no matter the sacrifice for themselves._ _ _ _

____“Through his humor, Steve liked to make it clear that he wasn’t perfect, eve if it was always hard to believe. Who would ever say that Captain America wasn’t perfect?” He paused, looking up at the first pew, stuffed with Avengers. Natasha sat next to Clint, who rested his hand on the top of her knee. As Sam began to talk again, the camera went back to him. He raised his eyes, and for a moment, they found a camera. Quickly, they flicked back to his cards._ _ _ _

____Bucky felt his insides twinge, his left hand twitch. He leaned in._ _ _ _

____“Steve was so much more than Captain America. He was a loyal friend, a teammate, and one of the greatest people I ever had the opportunity to know. If how he went down doesn’t prove the lengths he was willing to go for the people he cared about, nothing will. But most importantly, Steve Rogers taught us all how to be the person we wanted to be. A person who knew what needed to be done and was willing to put themselves aside to do those things. He showed us what it meant to be good. Good is something more than ourselves. What’s best for us isn’t going to be what’s best for everyone else. As modest as he tried to be, this was what Steve could do, almost always.”_ _ _ _

____“We all became better people by knowing him. The world was a better place with him in it. A safer place. Once he was back, it was hard to imagine what life would be like without Captain America around. Now it’s our duty to try to continue to do what he did.”_ _ _ _

____Bucky thought of Steve breaking him out of the prison. The way he had gone against Tony, refusing to accept that it was Bucky’s fault for killing the Starks’, even if he was the one who’d still done it. That unwavering loyalty came at a cost._ _ _ _

____He stood up and went into Steve’s bedroom, unable to face whatever or whoever was next at the funeral. Sam exited the stage, just as a choir began to sing._ _ _ _

____The audience at the procession sniffed. Boxes of tissues were passed around. From the front pew, Sam regained his spot next to Natasha. She gave him a small smile, despite her reddening eyes._ _ _ _

____Cameras went over the masses of people, members of the media with cameras and notepads, former agents from SHIELD, both those who had known Steve and those who had only heard of him. Civilians who had been lucky enough to find a seat and those who gathered in the large huddles in the back._ _ _ _

____During rests in the song, the cathedral settled into eerie silence, as if no one dared breathe to disturb Steve._ _ _ _

____In the bathroom, large clumps of hair settled on the floor. Strips of brown hair began to pile up._ _ _ _

____Bucky looked at himself in the mirror, his hair now cropped, almost a like a vision of the way things used to be._ _ _ _

____Sam’s words echoed through is mind. “Now it’s our duty to try to continue to do what he did.”_ _ _ _

____The only thing that deviated from the familiarity of his war days was the large white star on his chest, standing out against the red and blue of the Captain America uniform sprawled out over his body._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read this. I really hope you enjoyed it


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